


A Side/B Side

by Cards_Slash



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Slow Burn, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Universe swapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:06:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 29
Words: 271,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Everything was going great until Tony woke up in the wrong bed, in the wrong house, in the wrong state, in the wronguniverse.  It wouldn't be so bad except he's woken up in a world where Tony Stark is a woman (married to Steve Rogers).  Everything is great in the ideal world: the Avengers save the day, Tony has his house, his suits, and Jarvis.  Everything except how annoying Steve, the doting husband, trying to help him figure out how to get back to his own world is.Everything was perfect until Tony woke up in the wrong bedroom, in a world where her life was one damn inexplicable nightmare after another.  Maybe she could have accepted that she'd taken up drinking again, and maybe she could have eventually gotten over the fact that Jarvis was dead, but nothing infuriated her the way this imposter claiming to be Steven Rogers did.  Nothing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally meant to be a funny post on tumblr, and it may have stayed that way if not for [@chamiyokuroi](http://chamiryokuroi.tumblr.com/) and a certain promise of art. 
> 
> If you'd like sneak peaks/art/commentary/what have you for this fic everything will be at [my tumblr (bewareofchris)](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com) under the tag ["Vinyl"](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com/tagged/vinyl)

# A Side:

It wasn’t that she had never woken up with a hangover before; Tony fucking Stark had perfected the fine form of a good hangover, complete with all the hits and highlights. (Just it had been some time since she had woken up with one.) There was a headache that throbbed between her temples. The dry-eyed, dry-tongued disorientation that left her grasping at the blankets and sheets when she finally dragged herself up to sitting. Her gut had the distinct feeling of having tied itself into a knot. 

“Jarvis,” she said. The sheets were wrapped around her waist like a slipknot, tightening despite her best efforts to free herself. The effort wasn’t exhausting but nauseating; she fell back into the bed, groaning at the pulsing in her head as she flailed an arm out to the side, knocking this and that off the table nearest her side before she finally found her phone. “Steve?” she said to the time (a mere 5:09 AM, perhaps too early even for Steve to be already awake again). The light made her squint, the screen went fuzzy through her lashes. She kicked at the sheets and almost got free. “Jarvis!” she shouted into the dark of the room. 

“Sir?” was a voice that most certainly was _not_ Jarvis. 

Tony arched her body off the bed and shoved the blankets down so her legs were finally free. “Lights?” she said. The whole room flickered and came alive, a fine run of blue lights giving way to a gentle glow that brought all the wrong details into focus. If her head hadn’t already been hurting, the shock alone would have been a swift kick to the temple. “Where am I?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“We are in the Avengers tower in New York, sir.” The voice answered promptly. It was a perfectly serviceable answer from a perfectly serviceable AI. “I am Friday, sir.”

She mumbled over the sound of that name. There were many-many-many names tucked away into her skull; the result of a lifetime of bad hangovers and redemption arcs. But that one, that name, “Friday?” that didn’t sound like something she remembered. There were more immediate concerns to deal with besides the presence of an unknown AI, like the scatter of things that didn’t belong to her in a room she didn’t recognize, in a tower that she _should_ have known on sight. “Where’s Steve?” Tony asked.

“Steve Rogers is at the Avengers Compound, sir.” 

Tony was shoving her knuckles into the edge of the arc reactor in her chest; it didn’t do a single fucking thing to calm her racing heartbeat but scraping her knuckles across the uneven surface gave her something to think about that wasn’t the three-piece suit strewn all over (not) her floor.

It wasn’t all wrong; if she ignored the details, the room wasn’t unfamiliar. It was just when she started putting all the bits and bobs back in place that nothing made sense. Like one of those ‘what’s wrong with this picture’ puzzles, she gave up trying to catalogue the things that shouldn’t have been around number fifty-six. “Where’s Jarvis?” she asked, “who are you?”

“I am Friday, sir.”

“You said that,” she mumbled to herself. “Who made you?”

“You did, sir.”

“That doesn’t sound unlike me,” Tony mumbled to herself. She twisted around to look at the other side of the bed. It was a blank space, devoid of all the things that Steve left lying on his table. It was empty in every sense—no extra pillow, no folded blanket, no pencil, no paper, no torn-out-pages or MP3 players. No shield propped against the wall. “What happened to Jarvis?” she repeated.

Friday didn’t immediately answer—either it didn’t know or it had struck on an idea that it did not know how to properly convey—finally it said, “Jarvis was destroyed by Ultron, sir.”

“Bathroom,” Tony said when she lost the mounting war with the urge to vomit. Friday directed her to the toilet and was polite enough to offer to call for assistance. Tony was one-hundred percent certified on how to properly vomit without help. She was rinsing her mouth, staring at a travel bag full of toiletries she didn’t recognize. It was the razor that got her, so innocently sitting at the top of the bag: a man’s razor. To match the suit in the other room, to go with the man’s watch on the table. “Whose room am I in?”

“Yours, sir,” Friday answered.

Tony stared into the mirror, both hands going white-knuckled as she gripped the sink. Her eyes were pink all around the edges, her face blotched up red from effort. Her hair was sticking up at all angles, in need of a comb and a bit of gel. “Who am I?” Maybe she could have thought it out faster than the AI but one way or another they ended up at exactly the same conclusion at exactly the same time.

“You are Tony Stark, sir.”

Just not, she was realizing, the one that belonged in this bedroom. “Right,” was mostly to the mirror, the razor, the suit, the watch—all things that were imperfect mirrors of things she recognized. Like a funhouse mirror that distorted shape and gender, she knew without asking the things were hers (or this other version of hers, the one that was a him and kept his things in disarray). “Right,” she repeated to her reflection, “we’ve woken up in bad places before. This is going to be okay.”

“Sir?” Friday prompted.

“Right,” Tony repeated. She wet the comb on the sink and slicked her hair back away from her face. It wouldn’t stay that way without gel and effort, but it was good enough for now. Once she’d managed that, she went to help herself to some clothes she dug out of the suitcase sitting open on a little stand. The jeans were butter soft when she pulled them on, fit to her body with no odd gaps or pinching places. The T-shirts were soft as baby skin, loose enough not to grip at her chest, not baggy enough to give any tabloid writer with a penchant for bad stories the impression she was hiding anything. “Thank God for small favors,” she whispered. She went back to the bed to dig the phone out of the covers, and checked the time and the date again. 

Good to know, regardless of where she’d been teleported, her refined taste in electronics hadn’t changed. She stared at the time (5:24) and the little date beneath it (May 29, 2015) with a primal twist of disappointment so sharp it stole her breath. She didn’t _gasp_ but she didn’t _breathe_ either. Maybe it was selfish in the grand scheme of things, to be so taken back with disappointment, to be so overcome with the unfairness of it, but she’d gone to bed the night before with a husband at her side that had been full of silly, sweet ideas about what he planned to do for her birthday. 

But she was _here_ ; in this place that wasn’t hers. Wrapping her head around the idea of multiple nearly identical universes wasn’t much of a leap when she’d met and talked to and touched an actual God older than she could imagine ever being. She’d seen men fly and skies split open. Hell, she’d wrapped her legs around a living-breathing sci-fi hero. 

It was simple. She was _here_ where she didn’t belong, and she needed to return _there_ where she did belong. “Where’s Bruce?” she asked.

“At this time, I have not been able to locate Mr. Banner, sir. His last known coordinates are—”

“Last known coordinates?” Tony repeated, “what does that mean? Why isn’t he in the tower? Or the lab? Wha—where is Jarvis?”

Friday went quiet again, the only sort of defiance an AI had against its bossy creator. She didn’t sound terse (because she couldn’t) when she came back to say (in a way that still managed to convey she’d already said as much): “Jarvis was destroyed by Ultron, sir.”

And that, well _that_ just didn’t make any fucking sense. Ultron had never been completed; it was an idea on a hard drive, a series of recordings of him and Bruce dusting crumbs off their fingertips as they talked shit and shop talk over late dinners in the lab. It had been a fantastic idea but it hadn’t progressed past the first brutish attempts to nail down some concrete purpose for it. In light of greater threats, and more important personal interruptions, Ultron had simply never come to fruition.

There _were_ more important things to worry about than what had become of Jarvis. (Was there? It didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like one could simply move past the death of their child as if it were nothing. Tony hadn’t ever been pregnant in any real sense of the word but she’d put enough labor into Jarvis to feel more than a passing attachment.) “Show me,” Tony said. 

A wall screen flickered on: it played footage that seemed to be held together with thin strips of tape. The action jumped and popped, the voices cut in and out again. There were too many things happening—too many metal bodies attacking people that looked like people she knew (and loved) and when it was over, they were in the lab again.

There was the man she wasn’t: this universe’s Tony, looking six days past a decent sleep, saying the fight hadn’t been without casualties. Her hand slid over her mouth when Jarvis’ corpse flickered into bright light on screen, the scattered bits of what he _had_ been illuminated just enough to be seen. There wasn’t enough time to feel _anything_ about it before it was Thor striding straight through the glittering remnants of Jarvis, he grabbed Tony (not her, this other Tony) by the throat. His voice was a hiss of accusation, low and dark, as this Tony’s hands lifted to pull at the fingers on his throat. 

No, there was no time to process, to think, to feel anything at all about how Jarvis had been destroyed, but there was an eternity of time to hear Steve say, _Thor, the legionnaire?_ To see how he hadn’t moved, or flinched, or blinked when Thor had grabbed Tony. 

None of them moved. None of them seemed to care.

It was beyond her control; this history that surrounded her. She reminded herself as she blinked the filmy cloud of excess tears out of her eyes. The screen kept playing as the sound went in-and-out again. She was half-listening to their voices, staring at the dresser beneath the screen. It was scattered with bits of trash, the sort of thing she took out of her pockets at the end of the day: business cards and scratch paper, straw wrappers, lint and spare change. There was a stylus and a bolt and a handful of washers pooled at the bottom of an empty bottle of scotch. The cap was upside down in the debris with precisely the same carelessness as the suit on the floor.

( _Don’t jump to conclusions_ , someone had said to her once upon a time. _Don’t assume the first thing you think of is the only answer._ Maybe that had been a professor or maybe it had been a lover. Or maybe her Mother, definitely not her Father.)

Sure, it was plausible to think there was a fuck up Tony taking up space in this universe, that she’d landed in a world where she was a man who was a dick who deserved to be lifted into the air by the throat. It wasn’t even a stretch because she’d been enough of a dick in her own universe that some shared the sentiment. It would have been too easy to assume the position of defense for this Tony for no other reason than a shared name and a really nice pair of jeans. 

Except, there was Steven Grant Rogers, as big as the Statue of Liberty, taking up all the pretense of leadership with the tone of his voice, wrapping himself up in morals like an impenetrable shield, answering the question ‘how were you planning on defeating that’ with a solemn, condemning, “ _together_.” (Like _ideals_ were real weapons and little boys dressed up in flag costumes could do anything if they _really_ believed.)

Tony ran her tongue across her lips and wrapped her first around the neck of the empty scotch bottle. It scrapped across the dresser top and knocked coins and paper on the floor (not that it mattered, much). She’d given up drinking years back, but the urge was there, the thought that if this bottle were bit heavier she’d have a drink or two or six or sixty. “Go back,” she said. “Show me what happened before—what happened before this?”

# B Side: 

All things considered, (and Tony did like to consider all things), he would have preferred a new nightmare over the same one. It didn’t seem like too much to ask; not a miracle or even necessarily a drastic change. He wasn’t even trying to trick his subconscious into doing something radical, like simply not having nightmares anymore. 

No, Tony Stark had adopted a system of modest goals when it came to sleep. He just wanted a good five hours, six if he could manage it, in a bed and hopefully consecutively. He’d been asking his unresponsive subconscious to give him something besides dread and terror since he’d fallen through a hole in space. (But it was best not to harp on that too much; the best it ever got him was tolerance. Yes Tony, we know. Yes Tony. Move on Tony. Get over it Tony. We were all there Tony.) 

So, if his subconscious had a conscious of its own to argue on its behalf, it might have bothered to point out that it had, in fact, provided him with a brand spanking new nightmare. His nightly climb up the mountain of corpses was fresh _horror_. The visceral sensation of stepping on the lifeless limbs of his friends turned his stomach over-and-over again but none of it, not _one_ single bit of it was half as bad as Steve God Damn Rogers’ hand grabbing him by the arm or the shirt or the leg or wherever his phantom dream arm could grab. 

The words never changed. Not once: they were all the same: “You did this. You didn’t protect us.”

It started as a failure to protect them. It got twisted up in Ultron, it took on nuances of his personality, it started to sound like his voice humming (there are no strings on me) as he sat on his throne at the top of the heap. 

Sometimes it snowed. Sometimes it rained. 

Regardless the weather, or the night, or the body at his side, every single morning started the same.

Tony jerked upright. His elbows hit flesh to the side—(that was strange because Pepper had abandoned their bed months ago to take up safer quarters when possible)—as he gasped when he wanted to scream. The world swam in and out of focus, the fast-fast beat of his heart filling his head up with a nauseous sort of pain as he grabbed at the blankets looking for anchor. There was sweat on his arms and his head, soaked into his shirt.

In half-breaths, he had just enough good sense to remind himself that he wasn’t dying. No-he-was-alive. No, it-wasn’t-the-shrapnel. No-this-was-safe. It never seemed to help; the panic didn’t wane; the morning didn’t change. Tony shoved his fists against his eyes, concentrated on breathing when it felt like he was suffocating (by far his least favorite aspect of the whole ordeal). 

“Tony,” interrupted his efforts, a hand wrapped around his elbow, an arm went around his back and suddenly he was being trapped in a very-very small space. He was crowded, too hot, too close, too much of everything. 

He jerked sideways and slid off the edge of the bed he didn’t realize was too close, taking the blankets and the pillows with him along the way. He was on his back on the floor with his legs hanging off the side of the bed. There was just enough focus left in his brain (fast filling with static sounds) to realize he wasn’t staring up at Pepper (frowning at him for attacking her while they were sleeping _again_ ) but Steve God Damn Rogers, crawling off the bed after him with more honest concern than he’d ever seen the man manage before.

“What are you doing?” Tony shouted at Steve.

Steve had one hand on either side of his shoulders and one knee on the floor, looking at him flat on his back like they’d never been properly introduced. “Who are you?” Steve asked in the same breath. “Where’s my—”

“I’m Tony,” he answered in time with,

“Wife—” and that got jumbled up with:

“Wife?” That had all its syllables spaced out with:

“You’re not Tony.”

It was a charming conversation to have, flat on his back, still damp with last night’s nightmare. He couldn’t even swear he hadn’t had a fantasy or two that ran along these lines, perhaps with sweat of a different nature, but there was such a thing as boundaries. Tony used his elbows to pull himself out from under Steve, kicked his heels against the ground to give him enough of a boost he was completely free. “I think I know who I am,” he said.

Steve was sitting back on his knees, silhouetted by the glittering light that reflected off the water in the distance. It highlighted the desperate confusion on Steve’s face and the way his fingers twitched even as he held his palms up to indicate he wasn’t a threat. But his voice wasn’t unthreatening, only reserved, when it said, “Jarvis, where’s Tony?”

“Jarvis?” Tony repeated. He was all set to remind Steve that Jarvis had been destroyed in the making of his new best friend Vision and just before he managed to get the right words in the right order:

“I do not understand the question, sir,” seemed to be directed at Steve, while, “yes, Ms. Stark,” must have been meant to address him.

“Miss?” he repeated.

“Stark?” Steve echoed. He didn’t move but look Tony over with his lip curled up in something like disgust (seemed like him) or confusion (also very Steve like) at the same time Tony stuck one hand between his legs to check his penis was still intact and pressed the other against his chest to check for a sudden development of breasts. Everything checked out the same as what he’d gone to sleep with the night before. “Jarvis, this is Tony?” he pointed across the room at Tony.

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis said.

Tony was grappling with many things: waking up with Steve in his bed, the reality of Jarvis being alive (as alive as any AI could be), and the five-minutes-late realization of: “Are we in Malibu?” Tony got to his feet while Steve stared at him with open-mouthed confusion. The room was the same shape, the same size, the same look that it had been before. The fine details were altered, but the broad strokes were unchanged. He stood in front of the windows that had been shattered when the building collapsed. The glass was sun warm under his palm, as real and solid as his own flesh. “This is Malibu,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” was Steve behind him. His reflection was hazy in the window, a trick of inconstant bent light, as he got to his feet. He was shirtless, looking flawless, standing there with his hands on his hips. “Ok. What happened?” as if he expected Tony would have some kind of answer. “When we went to bed last night—you were a woman. Are you—I mean, are you still _you_?”

“Cap,” Tony said (mostly to the waves beyond the glass), “I can safely guarantee you I am not whoever you went to bed with last night.” He turned to look at Steve, “that’s beautiful isn’t it,” he motioned out. “They told me I couldn’t build this house, you know. I said I could, they said I was insane. That I thought too much of myself.” He smiled at the memory, the benefit of wealth and youth and arrogance. 

Steve had the clenched-tight jaw of a man trying to understand. 

Tony ran his tongue across his lips and looked back out. “I couldn’t _re_ build it though.”

“So, you’re not her,” Steve summed up, skipping over all the other bits. “Where is she then?”

“I don’t even know where I am. She?” he pulled himself away from watching the waves to look at Steve again. Jarvis dimmed the panels so the sunlight wasn’t so bright in the room. Without the brilliant glare, Steve’s desperation was heavy with shadows. All those half-noticed details stood out against his memory of the room. The table where Pepper had kept her phone and her Chapstick was piled with books, and notebooks and pencils worn down to nubs. The shield was propped against the wall closest to the bed (no surprise there) and the rumpled bed was covered in two very different blankets. “We don’t share a blanket?” he pointed at it.

“You get colder than I do,” Steve said. “I don’t know how to tell you where you are. Malibu? Our bedroom? 2015? Your birthday?” 

“You sleep here often?” Tony asked. He picked up the thin blanket, dragged it back over to its side of the bed like it mattered. Steve bent to pick up the thick blanket and threw it onto the bed. 

“Only since we got married.”

“Married?” Tony repeated. He didn’t need Steve to nod to know he was serious, the man was always serious, but that was too monumental to think through. “I’m dreaming. I asked for a new nightmare and I got one. _Married_? You and I,” he motioned in the space between them, “we don’t get along. We’re barely friends.” That wasn’t important, that wasn’t important at all, he motioned at the whole room. “I’m dreaming.”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t exactly be an authority on whether I am, would you?” Tony countered. “You’re part of it. _You’re_ the dream.”

Steve shook his head at that, hands back on his hips, “that’s something you’ve never called me before.”

“Now I know I’m dreaming. There’s a universe where Steve Rogers isn’t _the_ dream? What a world,” he said softly. “Jarvis, buddy—am I dreaming?”

“You do not appear to be dreaming, Ms. Stark.”

“Well I can’t trust that, can I?” Tony said. He motioned upward. “The guy thinks I’m a woman still—and why is my name Stark if we’re married?”

“You didn’t want to change it,” Steve said. He’d reached the end of his ability to cope, he was shaking his head as he picked a shirt up out of basket across the room and pulled it on over his head. “I have to get coffee, call Bruce—or Thor. There has to be an explanation.” He walked out of the room as if he could simply do that, as if dreams could do what they want.

“Jarvis,” Tony said. 

“Ma’am?” That made him giggle, all alone, in the middle of a bedroom that had been destroyed (by his impetuous arrogance) not even a full two years ago. There was a certain sort of humor in that; there had to be. This building had collapsed into the sea, it had dragged him with it. The water had been as dark as space but _heavy_.

No. There was no good to come of thinking of that. “I’m a man. Call me sir.” 

“Of course, sir,” Jarvis corrected.

As far as he could see, he had two options: stand and stare out the window, soaking up a living memory (killing time, waiting for the dream to end), or follow Steve. There was nothing to be gained by lingering here, nothing but another dark rabbit hole to get sucked under. This little fantasy land he’d been trapped in didn’t appear to be full of corpses, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find some if he saw it through. Maybe if he tripped over the bodies he could wake up in the real world. 

“A man?” sounded very much like Pepper in those days back before she’d taken over running his company, the way she’d sounded younger and less burdened, less bothered by apocalypses and better business practices. “And it’s really Tony?”

“My ears are burning,” he said at the door of the kitchen. He was prepared for anything but the way Pepper looked at them like they were strangers. She just _stared_ at him with all the aggression that Steve didn’t seem to be able to bring himself to. “Really Tony,” he said with a motion at his body.

“Where’s the arc reactor?” Pepper asked.

“I had it removed,” he said.

“Removed?” Pepper snorted at that. She held her hand up in his direction and raised her eyebrows at Steve. Whatever unspoken conversation they were having (this early in the morning), it ended with Steve shrugging. “I wasn’t aware it could be removed.”

Everyone got caught up on that. Tony could have explained the entire procedure to them in detail but it didn’t seem like it was worth the effort. Instead he motioned at the platters of food left sitting on the counter, “is that for my birthday?”

“It’s for Tony’s birthday,” Pepper amended.

“Pepper,” Steve whispered. “I can’t tell you how I know, but I know this _is_ Tony. We just have to figure out _how_ and where our Tony is and how to get her back.” 

This was the nightmare, Tony realized. This right here. Watching Steve look at him from across a room, one hand around a mug of coffee, looking concerned and confused. It was a clever, _cruel_ nightmare: a little view of a world he couldn’t have to haunt him when he finally woke up. “You should call Bruce,” Tony said. “I don’t—I don’t know where to start looking.” 

“I’ll call him,” Steve said. 

Pepper didn’t look convinced with her arms crossed over her chest, but she glanced from him to the dishes keeping warm on the counter and back. “Do you still like doughnuts? I’ve got every kind of doughnut I could order.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I like doughnuts.”

# A Side: 

The feeling was a hard one to describe; there were many feelings left in the world that Steve found himself at a loss to describe in short words. He’d been small as a teenage girl, wheezy and on the verge of dying half his life. He’d been _awake_ and _aware_ the whole time his body was being reshaped into something _else_. He’d been a laughingstock in tights with a toy shield that had been a real hit during war time with all the future widows needed an ideal to throw money at. He’d been lonesome on his own, trying to figure out how to work the body they’d given him. He’d been a war hero, maybe, once. The leader of a group of men who respected the raw power a few vials of serum and a lifetime of determination had given him.

He’d died and he remembered that too, the sound the plane made when it hit the water. He remembered how cold and how deep he’d gotten before the world went black. 

He’d woken up in a world that he didn’t recognize, he’d spent a while searching for something that felt _right_ and came up short every single time. (Not _every_ time. He’d found Bucky, he’d seen his face, he’d seen the recognition and he’d let that haunt him for a while now.) He’d been lonely and he’d been angry and he’d been lost. He had been restless, he had been dissatisfied. 

This was all of that and it was none of that. It was a physical sensation of exhaustion that made every bit of him slow to get started. It felt, ever since he woke up at five-oh-nine that morning that he’d been running through a pit of glue. As if the horizon was moving away from him, as if the world itself had changed shape and he was there again, a stranger in a new place that he couldn’t navigate.

“We took a vote,” Natasha said when he jogged to a slow walk. She’d been sitting on an upside-down cooler by the side of the track he’d worn into the grass with his running. “We think it’s dementia. You’re an old man.”

“Get a new line,” he said. She was grinning at him with a towel hanging from her fist; she was a damn good actress, better than anyone he’d ever seen—but she couldn’t hide or didn’t try to hide the concern that was leeching the humor from her face. “You took a vote?” he repeated. He paced and she sat and watched. “You drew the short straw?”

“No.” That was honest, at least. “I’m concerned.”

“You’re too kind,” Steve said. He wiped his face and the back of his neck and came to a stuttered pause in front of her. It was mid-afternoon, pleasantly warm in the unyielding sunshine, and she was wearing all black and smiling at him without a sign of sweat anywhere on her body. “Is everyone concerned?” he looked back over toward the compound that he’d walked out of an hour or so ago when he couldn’t shake the sensation of something being _wrong_. 

“I think Vision is interested in dissecting you for science purposes if that counts as concern.”

Steve snorted, Natasha smiled. 

“I’m here, Steve. I’m here for the team; I’m here for the long haul. If there’s something that could put our team in jeopardy—” 

“Come on,” Steve said. He was all set to roll his eyes at it, to deny the insinuation that he wasn’t capable or willing. One rough day wasn’t that uncalled for; half the Avengers had done worse with less time and less prompting. 

“We never talked about what Wanda showed you,” Natasha said, “if it’s something that’s—”

“You sound like Tony,” Steve said. He balled the towel up and closed his fist around it. She didn’t look away from his face because no matter what he did, she just couldn’t bring herself to even pretend to be threatened around him. 

“Half our team was an enemy a month ago,” Natasha said. “We can’t afford to keep secrets, we can’t afford to slip up here.” She stood up, planted her feet in the grass and crossed her arms over her chest as she stared up at him. 

“You agreed about Wan—”

“She’s a better ally than enemy, that doesn’t mean I’m ready to be friends. I need to know if this is going to be a problem, Rogers.” She spared a hand to motion at his entire body, the sweat soaked into his shirt, the rut he’d dug with his endless running, and the whole unseen wrongness of the day. “Reassure me,” Natasha said.

“I’m not—” was the start of a denial that wasn’t supposed to end with a shadow stretching across the grass, or the dark shape that couldn’t be seen except at the edges. He could see it well enough to see it was red-and-gold and man-shaped. “Tony?”

“Tony?” Natasha repeated in the split second before Iron Man lifted his arm with his palm pointed straight at Steve’s chest. 

“Do you still believe in God, Steven?” Tony asked. 

(And this, Steve thought in the half-a-heart-beat he had to think of anything, must have been what that sensation of wrongness was.) Natasha pulled a gun as she moved backward, she said: “what’s going on Tony?”

“We don’t even know if he’s in that thing,” Steve said. He was looking for anything to use as a shield, his hand was clenching in the air grasping for the handles and finding nothing at all. “Shit,” he hissed as the repulsor powered up. 

Natasha started shooting and Tony turned his head to look down at her. The suit had no expression but the modulated voice coming from the speaker did when it said, “I’ll get to you in a minute.” The suit split in the shoulder and a dart shot out—it struck Natasha in the neck and she gasped with her hand slapped across it.

“Tony!” Steve shouted. He tried to move forward to grab Natasha as she wilted to the ground but Iron Man (that may or may not contain Tony) dropped to stand in the space between them. It raised its arm. 

“This won’t kill you, Cap but it isn’t going to feel good either.” And it shot him, in the chest, with enough force that it knocked him off his feet. He’d been thrown around more than his fair share, he’d been slammed into everything from brick buildings to trees to tanks to glass walls. Nothing hurt the way it hurt to get kicked in the chest by the repulsor, it threw him across the yard and when he hit the dirt it flew around his body. He crossed his arms over his face when he saw the approaching glint of red and gold. 

The suit’s hand grabbed him by the neck, yanked him out of the ground and held him where it could stare at him. It was hard to breath with the constricting pain in his chest (a broken rib, maybe) but he managed it enough to stop the fist aimed at his face. The suit was stronger than him in a sheer battle of muscle and Tony (if he was inside of it) was stubborn enough to never give up. “What are you doing?” he ground between his teeth. The mechanical noises of the suit shifting gave him just enough warning to shove his feet into the ground so he could throw himself out of the way of the punch. He cleared Tony’s fist by inches (if so much) with his legs spread around the hole his body had made and Tony’s fist buried in the dirt.

“Cap!” sounded very much like Sam who was running across the yard with a gun in one hand and the shield in the other. He threw the shield with as much precision as he could, it fell short but it was close enough Steve could get it before the suit worked itself up to a second attempt to punch a hole in his chest. They met in the middle, Steve braced behind the shield and Tony’s fist coming to a quick stop just before it hit the shield. There was no impact, no shock that threw them back from one another. 

The suit couldn’t smile, but Tony’s voice sounded like it was grinning behind the mask. “That was a good one, Steven. Not a lot of people here understand you, do they?” And Tony’s second hand came up under the shield, it wrenched the shield back and the handles didn’t snap or give but take his arm along with it. Howard had spent an hour (or better) lecturing him about how the handles should have failsafe, that if anyone ever took the shield with enough force he could break his arm.

Thing was: nobody had ever spent too much time trying to take Steve’s shield.

Not until that moment, not until the bone snapped and he screamed at Tony, tightened his fist around the handle and grabbed the top of the shield with his free hand so he could kick both of his legs against the suit’s chest. That was enough to free him, he hit the ground on his back, trying to catch his breath. He had a great view of the bullets hitting the suit from the side as Sam fired at Iron Man without restraint.

He was half on his side when Wanda ran up to the scene and Iron Man didn’t even seem to care about the bullets ricocheting this-way and that-way off his armor. He shook his head when he saw Wanda, raised an arm and said, “not today, bitch,” in a way that Tony simply _never_ would before he fired the repulsor at her. She was quick enough to catch in the shimmery red-pink energy but the look of shock and fear on her face was near to paralyzing.

“Stop it, Tony!” Steve growled. He shoved himself up to his feet, tried to get his numb hand to clench around the shield and couldn’t. It slid half off his arm while the Iron Man suit regarded him. 

“That’s annoying,” it said before the shoulders split again and it shot a second dart. It hit Sam without Tony ever having looked sideways at him. Wanda was gasping with the effort of holding the repulsor energy, trying to redirect it up. “It won’t kill her,” Tony said. “I made sure of it.”

War Machine dropped from the sky to Steve’s left as Wanda’s attempts proved fruitless and the energy she’d been holding smacked into her chest. It knocked her back with a startled scream but she was still awake and breathing as she lifted her head up to look at him. Rhodey aimed every gun he had on Tony, “don’t make me use these,” he said.

The Iron Man suit shifted its weight, lifted both its arms palms out and the mask slid up. It wasn’t Tony inside but (a woman) who was smirking at them with a sort of smile that seemed very, very familiar. “That’s a fight I always enjoy, Colonel Rhodes. Not a fair one, I made this suit non-lethal on purpose.” She looked directly at Steve the way a man looked at dog shit stuck to his shoe. “I’ll go peacefully.” The whole suit opened up and she stepped out it, wearing Tony’s clothes all the way down to the socks. 

“What the hell is going on?” Rhodey asked.

“I’d like to figure that out myself,” the woman said. “Only, it seems like this bag of dicks,” she motioned at Steve, “did such a shit job with my team the only one of you smart enough to stand a chance of helping me figure it out has disappeared.” And like she only just thought of it, “unless you know where Jane Foster is.”

“Who are you?” Steve asked. He worked the shield strap off the broken part of his arm while she watched him. When he’d finally managed it, she smiled right at his face, exactly the same way Tony did. And Steve _knew_ even before she spoke, he _knew_ exactly what she was going to say:

“I’m Tony Stark.”

# B Side

“A man?” seemed to be the bit that everyone was stuck on. Pepper had lingered over the revelation that Tony had been replaced by a man far longer than she’d bothered to be worried about where their Tony had gone. Even the concept of wormholes (or something of the sort) that appeared in a man’s bedroom and soundlessly stole a man’s wife didn’t seem to strike her as absurd. No, it was only that Tony’s replacement was a man. And now Bruce, with his voice small and distant on the other end of the phone. 

Steve was sitting on the piano bench with his fingers pressed against his forehead, warding off the memory of a headache. (Much like all other things his new body had gotten rid of, headaches were a thing of the past or very serious concussions.) He had his eyes closed because he liked the world a bit better when he wasn’t looking at it (at present) as he nodded his head and said (again), “yes.”

“How can you be sure it’s Tony?”

“I know my wife,” Steve said. That wasn’t an explanation but a gut feeling. It wasn’t exactly a situation that called for concrete proof. “Jarvis says its Tony. He listens to him; he obeys him. Jarvis doesn’t obey anyone that Tony hasn’t personally given clearance to.”

Bruce sighed on the opposite end of the phone. “I don’t know how much help I’d be. This, this doesn’t sound like my field.” 

Steve opened his eyes when the quiet drag of footsteps stopped a polite distance to his left. He turned his head just enough to get a good look at the man who had replaced his wife, the one that stood and stared out the windows like he was working his way around to not crying. “Then come as a friend,” Steve said. “I’ve got to go.” He hung up before Bruce could start up with any more rebuttals or counterarguments. (For a genial guy, Bruce was especially good at changing his argument when the moment called for it.) It was safer behind the piano, watching this person that was and wasn’t Tony.

The space kept them safe, provided the illusion of choice in a situation that was far past their control. Steve was working his way around to saying something, really anything, but Tony got there first, he looked away from the windows long enough to say, “is my lab still here?”

“She doesn’t like people going into her lab,” Steve said.

“I really don’t like that,” Tony agreed. He didn’t seem to believe it was that important though. His fingers were on the glass again, his mouth was making contemplative shapes. “Married,” he said.

“It’ll be a year in August,” Steve said.

Tony nodded, “did you get to wear the white dress?” 

“I didn’t wear a dress,” Steve said. In fact, barely either of them had managed to look presentable at all when they showed up to get married by the justice of the peace. It had been a matter of paper work, not public display. Tony had been wearing a dress (but no panties) and Steve had been wearing part of a suit that had survived the night before. Neither of them were technically presentable or of sound mind, but they were married nonetheless. 

“I was asking if you were a virgin,” Tony said.

“Uh, no—am I virgin where you’re from?” It wasn’t a dreadful thought; he’d seen no real problem in waiting for the right person (despite what modern society seemed to think of him). It was just, assuming they were all the same age, the other him was ninety-six and single. There was a difference between holding out for the right person and living a solitary life not of your own choosing. 

Tony shrugged, “I don’t know,” seemed simply exhausted. “We’re not that kind of friends. There’s a betting pool that says you are but we haven’t figured out how to ask yet.” He turned back to looking out the window with a ghost of a smile, “who was the lucky girl?”

“ _He_ was Bucky,” didn’t seem like it was what Tony expected to hear. “Depending on your definition of virginity. If we’re defining it as acts of penetration than, you. Just, before our wedding. You were insistent.”

“Always do a test drive,” was exactly what his wife had said to him with both her hands shoving his up her shirt. It had a different meaning when she was straddling his lap whispering filthy promises into his ear than it had here. She had been trying to undo his belt and his high morals (as she called them) and this man was repeating it by rote. 

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. He set the phone on the piano, balanced precariously between falling into and falling off of it. Tony took note of it with a cocked up eyebrow of almost disapproval but didn’t say anything. “What happened to your house where you’re from?”

“I invited a terrorist over for tea, he brought RPGs instead. I think I’m just having a little trouble with the fact that you don’t know this, that this house is here, that we’re _married_? What _happened_ in this world? What didn’t happen?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. 

“The Chitauri?”

“Yes.”

“Loki?”

“Yes.”

Tony squinted out into the sun, “the Mandarin? The suicide bombings? Happy got caught in one of the explosions. Pepper was kidnapped?”

The growing anxiety did nothing at all to reassure Steve that his wife was in a universe she would be safe in. “I think there was a Mandarin?” 

“Think?” Tony repeated. “ _Think_?”

“We deal with a lot of threats, Tony.” The word slid so easily off his tongue, it didn’t feel wrong until the second after he said it. There was no defining why, no separating how it was his Wife’s Name and the voice he used for Her and how he’d just used it here, with a stranger who was-and-was _not_ the same person. 

“He kidnapped the President,” Tony said.

“That did not happen.” He knew that for certain. 

“It was Christmas,” Tony said, “the same year the Chitauri attacked? Everyone thought I was dead?”

“That didn’t happen,” Steve repeated. “If your house was being attacked by—”

“Fire breathing terrorists in helicopters.”

“ _Helicopters_ ,” was the only part of that fantastic idea he could bear to repeat with a straight face, “why wouldn’t we be there to protect you?”

Tony opened his mouth with his hand halfway to declaring victory but he stopped short, mouth closing and face caught in sudden thought. Perhaps the idea hadn’t occurred to him (and that, too, did nothing to reassure him about his wife’s fate) or maybe there were more factors that Steve could understand but either way he dropped his arm at his side and said, “fair question,” without answering it. “It was a little before your time, probably, but did other me do the Stark Expo? 2010?”

“I think so,” Steve said.

“It was attacked in—where was it—Monaco? Ivan Vanko? Did that happen to the other me?” He didn’t pause long enough for an answer, “I almost died? Poisoning in the,” he tapped the place where the arc reactor should have been and seemed surprise to find it wasn’t there. “Hammer drones blew up the Expo?”

“Jesus,” Steve snapped. He stood up and knocked into the piano. The phone fell to the floor (which was better than back into the piano) and he didn’t stop to pick it up. Pacing was, as his wife told him, one of his less attractive hobbies but he was caught up between the need to punch something and the need to _move_. 

“Language,” Tony said. There wasn’t even a touch of irony in it.

They were strangers, staring at one another, waiting for an answer. Steve said, “I wasn’t awake for those events,” because he’d still been unconscious in ice at the time, “but I do not recall hearing about them either. She said that Howard had discovered a new element, that Fury gave her a box of his stuff. It’s about the only polite thing she ever said about Howard.”

This Tony, this stranger, nodded his head the exact same way his wife did whenever someone brought up her Father. All that unresolved anger bubbled and spit under his skin, and his hands clenched just like hers and then loosened again. “Fury just gave it to her? No strings, no—snippiness?” 

“Yes,” seemed like defeat.

“I just remembered,” was Pepper interrupting the moment. She had left her heels in the kitchen, so her footsteps were almost silent to undercut the urgency in her voice and the look on her face as she looked up from her phone. “The party.”

“Shit,” Steve hissed.

“ _Language_ ,” Tony said again.

It was better to ignore that and whatever it meant in the world this man was from. “We have to cancel,” Steve said. 

“And say what?”

The alternative to coming up with a semi-plausible lie (that wasn’t just Tony not showing up to her own party) was trying to pass this man off as his wife. It would have been a hard sell even without the facial hair and exhaustion. “What do you suggest?” he asked, “we tell everyone to dress in drag?”

“Have Natasha be me.” Tony looked very innocent when he said it, “I’m assuming she’s still a somewhat retired spy? About this tall,” he raised his hand to indicate her approximate height. “She should have some face-altering technology.” Tony motioned at Pepper, “or have Pepper be me.”

Steve was going to be civil about it, “you have a very distinctive presence,” but Pepper was still caught up on how this was a _man_ that had replaced her best friend.

“Wow,” she said, “it’s that easy for you? We could just pick any woman off the street and put a black wig on them, nobody would even notice. Never mind we’re all different heights and weights with different figures and nobody asked you, _Mr_. Stark.”

“Pepper,” Steve said.

“No, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. We can’t cancel the party, the best we can do is—I don’t know, say Tony decided not to show up. It’s been years since she didn’t but people will believe it, it’ll restart the pregnancy rumors and I’ll have to sit through another twenty interviews listening to so-called experts tell me how a woman’s body works but that, at least, would be something we _could_ do.” She was shaking her head, teeth grit together and staring at Tony with untampered dislike. (But not hate, just confusion and fear and anger.) 

“I can’t think of anything else,” Steve said. “It’ll be okay, Pepper.”

Her smile didn’t seem convinced but she nodded, “I should go. There’s a lot to prepare.” 

Tony waited until she’d left before he cleared his throat with one of his fingers running down the length of the piano and his body suddenly an arm’s distance away. “Pregnant?”

He just didn’t have it, not anywhere in the whole of his body, the patience to have that conversation. Instead he rolled his eyes and motioned to the side toward the stairway down to the lab, “come on, I’ll show you the lab. You can look as long as you don’t touch anything.” 

Tony shoved his hands into his pants pockets like agreeing to the terms and followed Steve down the steps and into the lab. He stood in front of the display of his suits with the same sorrowful wonder that he’d stared out at the waves. “I blew them up,” he said after a pause. “For Pepper, I think. Or for me. I don’t know; it gets mixed up sometimes. I thought it was something I had to do, to move on. I thought it would make a difference.”

“Did it?” Steve asked.

Tony looked over his shoulder, hands still in his pockets, his lips pulled up into a smile that did nothing to convey happiness or even amusement. “I thought it did.”

“But?”

“Nothing changed,” Tony said as much to the suits as to him. “I’m hungry, I’m going to go get a doughnut.” He pulled one hand out of his pockets long enough to open the door and disappeared up the steps at a jog. Steve was left to look at the suits in their cases, the whole history of Iron Man’s evolution, trying to think out where-exactly his wife was and how much danger she was in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention that this is set immediately after Age of Ultron (on the MCU side).

# A Side

  
“What are we looking at here?”

A woman playing dress up in Tony’s clothes, sitting in the jail cell in their basement, looking unbothered by the concrete walls. She was leaning back against the wooden bench sticking out of the wall, one leg stretched out in front of her and one bent so she could rest an arm across it. There weren’t many people in the world that could aggravate him just by existing but this-was and it was-not Tony and Steve didn’t need any sort of test or confirmation or logical explanation because there was no person that made him grind his teeth the way Tony did.

It was a series of events that were so perfect and imperfectly in character that the evidence supported the only conclusion. (It was the woman, looking bored and amused in the center of a crime scene motioning toward the compound saying, ‘I’m sure I’ve got a room,’ with all the presumptive arrogance of the man whose pants she was wearing.) 

It was Steve’s arm held tight to his chest, his ribs and his aching forearm hardly a worthwhile distraction from the unmoving woman on the screen. 

Out in the grass he’d plucked the darts out of his friends’ necks and held them up in her face. She had looked so much like Tony, unapologetic and amused, with one eyebrow lifted up and pity (always pity) making her expression almost a pout as she said, ‘don’t worry Steven, they’ll sleep it off in two hours top.’

“It’s Tony,” Steve said. “I don’t know how.”

Natasha was sitting in a chair, holding her head in one hand, watching the screen with blurry eyes. “It can’t be,” she said, or more importantly, “why would she attack you?”

“Yes, exactly,” Rhodey said. “I think we need to start from the assumption that this woman is not Tony Stark, and figure out where _Tony_ is.” He didn’t look at Steve but at Natasha, “Tony wouldn’t attack the team.”

“No, he’d just build a robot that would,” Steve said (more or less to himself). “Is Sam up?”

“No,” Natasha said. She tucked her hair behind her ear again. “Can we—” but she paused a moment, closed her eyes and rubbed the center of her head with her fingers, “get footage of the tower? Figure out how this woman got in? How she got the suits—I thought Tony’s suits were coded only to him.”

“Friday,” the woman on the screen said, “play me something jazzy.” The speakers filled up with music. 

Rhodey’s hand slid up to cover his mouth and Natasha peeled her eyes open to stare at the screen. The PA system for the building crackled to full life and the music poured out. The camera in the cell wasn’t pointed at the woman’s face, but staring at the back of her head, so there was no proving it, but just the feeling that she must have been smirking at the wall. 

“Friday,” he said. “Turn it off.”

“Sorry, sir. I’ve been instructed to play it in every room.”

“By who?” Rhodey asked.

“Mr. Stark, sir.”

Steve didn’t punch the screen the idea surfaced in his head like an apple bobbing on the water. It was shiny and perfect. He turned his back, let his head fall and tried to think around the swelling white rage that was springing straight out of his chest. 

“Steve,” Natasha said. 

“This is impossible,” Rhodey said. 

It might have been, last year or the year before or the one before that. Maybe it would have been impossible in nineteen-forty-two when he was working hard at breathing, never mind living. But that word didn’t mean what they thought it meant anymore: it was creeping up on them slowly, less and _less_ things were qualifying for _impossible_. “We have to call Pepper, we need the security footage from the tower,” he said. When he turned his head back to look at the screen, this Tony who wasn’t Tony hadn’t even moved. “Rhodey?” he prompted.

“She should be there today,” he said. “I’ll make a call, fly over to see what I can get.”

Natasha motioned at the screen, “I could take a pass at this. Interrogation is one of my specialties.”

“Do you think you can make her talk?” 

“Tony’s chatty,” Natasha said. She slid up to her feet and she didn’t waver the way she had when she crept into the room ten-or-fifteen minutes ago. Her hands slid around his broken arm, one palm on either side of the fracture and she tightened her fingers just enough to focus the ache. “You need to let Vision set your arm. Don’t be stubborn on this.”

“When Sam’s awake,” Steve said. “We don’t know what was in those vials.” He looked over her head, at the screen, at the unmoving woman in the prison cell. “We need to know where she’s from; we need to know if she’s an enemy.”

“No problem, boss,” Natasha said. She let her hand slide off Steve’s arm. If she had any doubt of her skills (and there was no reason she should, since she’d gotten everyone from Russian mob bosses to demi-gods to confess their plans), she didn’t show them on her face. Steve didn’t bother her with his.

Tony was chatty. Tony could talk for hours, and days, and weeks and years like a wind up record player being constantly cranked. It was just that no matter how much space he filled up with words and nods and jokes and giggles, he never seemed to _say_ anything. Or maybe it wasn’t about how this woman was exactly like Tony but how she wasn’t. 

Maybe it was about her voice through modulated speakers, the way her hand went under the shield rather than striking the surface of it. It was the _knowing_ she had when she said: _not a lot of people here understand you, do they?_

“Captain,” Vision said with his body halfway through the wall separating them from the infirmary. “Sam is awake. I believe we should set your arm now.”

\--

# B Side

:  
Tony had said that he was going to get a doughnut so it made sense he made it three-fourths the way to the master bedroom before he stopped short in the hallway (remembering, very suddenly, that it wasn’t really his). 

“Jarvis,” he said before he made up his mind which way he wanted to turn (the front door seemed especially inviting at the moment), “is anyone else in the house?”

“Captain Rogers is in the lab, sir.”

“Captain?” Tony repeated. He went toward the guest bedroom, the one he had almost never had a reason to use (at least, not where he was from). There hadn’t ever been an overwhelming number of people lining up to visit at the holidays. But it was nicely furnished and it had a shower. “That’s a little formal for the house.”

“I was instructed not to call him Mr. Rogers, sir.”

Tony snorted at that; he locked the door once he was inside and pushed his back against it. His legs didn’t give out but he was sinking down the door, pressing both his hands over his face in one last mad attempt to separate this hyper realistic nightmare from reality. 

(It wasn’t, though, a nightmare.) His aching left knee attested to the brutal, undeniable truth of the matter. No, Tony Stark was conscious. What it came down to was the matter of _where_ exactly he was conscious. This reality that layered over his own with such easy precision, that acted and reacted with familiarity. 

“Breathe,” he said against his palms with his eyes closed. His fingers were pressing so hard against them his vision was turning red behind the lids and it did nothing to take the edge off the hysteria that was bubbling up out of his chest. 

It was funny; it was _fucking_ hilarious.

It was _absurd_ ; and he was laughing with tears in his eyes and his head knocking against the door at his back. He laughed with his chest aching and it didn’t even surprise him to hear the knock on the other side of the door, the concerned little voice of the very-real but not very familiar Steve Rogers whispering through the door: 

“Tony?”

“I’m fine, Cap.” He wiped his damp face with his hands, scrubbed them across the pants he’d woken up in and let out a breath that did nothing to steady him. There was nothing to do but work the problem now. The first, the most important problem, was that he needed a shower and _clothes_. The door knob was sturdy when he grabbed it and Steve was standing in the hallway on the other side of the door with his hand half lifted to knock again. “Do you have anything clothes related around here that might fit me?”

Steve nodded, “yeah,” seemed like he was just happy to be useful, “yeah I could find something.”

“Great,” Tony said. “I’m going to take a shower. Is Bruce coming?”

“If he’s not here before, he’ll be at the party,” Steve said. 

“Perfect.” Look at him, full of vigor, full of life, (full of shit). He closed the door before Steve could get his jaw unhinged to ask whatever question was filling up all the space behind his face. (Looked like something like, _are you okay_ and there was no reason at all to go opening that can of worms.) 

Things seemed supremely unreasonable outside of a shower always seemed drastically more reasonable with the removal of clothing and the application of warm water. Standing in the hot water with his eyes closed, nothing seemed entirely insurmountable. He had every advantage in this universe: intelligence, wealth, friends, and _Jarvis_. It wasn’t that Friday wasn’t a good gal because she had been built to be as good as the original (or better); it was that Jarvis had been the first real success he’d had with any AI, the one that grew with him, that had followed him and it was all human sentimentality gumming up the works but it felt like (at times) Jarvis had supported and agreed with him.

It felt like a _choice_ , not a bit of default programming.

“Jarvis,” Tony said.

“Sir?”

“Nothing.” He grabbed the shampoo (sample sized, like a hotel) off the shelf in the shower and scrubbed his hair clean. When he was finished, standing in front of the mirror wearing nothing but a fluffy towel around his waist, there was a tired old man staring back at him. It was his body, exactly how it had been when he went to bed the night before. All the same scars, all the same dips and bumps and odd bits. “No time like the present,” he said to his reflection. 

Out in the bedroom, there was a white button down and a pair of black pants laying on the bed. Either this other version of him had taken up the habit of collection men’s clothing (and she might have, he would have had a collection of forgotten bras if Pepper hadn’t been so insistent about throwing them out) or he was about to try to wear Captain America’s day off clothes. 

“No underwear,” he said to the pile of clothes, “what kind of girl does he think I am?”

“Sir?” Jarvis prompted.

“It was rhetorical, buddy.” He shook the pants out and pulled them on, fully expecting that they would be stiff, too long and too tight around his waist. There was simply no explaining how well they fit. He stared at the cuffs and his feet sticking out from under them with both his hands pressed against the waistband, trying to reconcile how he’d come to be standing in the guest room of his formerly destroyed home wearing a pair of pants that had no right existing in a world where he was a woman. “Do we have a screen in this room?”

A light flickered to the side, drew his attention to a TV screen that ran through a series of code before displaying a neutral blue background. “Of course, sir.”

“Show me what I look like. Show me Tony Stark.”

There she was, on the cover of a magazine, smirking at him. The shape of the face was wrong but the eyes were the same, it was unnerving, to look at her, to see the bits that were and weren’t the same. Same eyes, same mouth, same smirk—but her shirts were tailored to fit her breasts. The picture lasted on a minute and it slid sideways to another, and another, and another, a great parade of photos from a pony-tailed prodigy to a pixie-cut-punk with one arm around Rhodey’s shoulders, and there she was in living colors, standing behind a podium with a poorly-covered-bruise under her eye trying and failing to read a lie off a cue card. 

“The truth is,” she said (as he thought, in his head, _please don’t_ ), “I am Iron Man.”

“That’s enough,” Tony said. “Stop it.” He picked up the shirt and pushed his arms into it. This was Steve’s, all shoulders and long torso, and it unlike the pants that fit him like a glove, it shifted and moved across his back. “Where’s this party?” Tony asked.

“The beach, sir,” Jarvis answered.

“My idea?”

“You are very fond of women in bikinis, sir,” Jarvis said. 

He was grinning at it, at the cheek of it, long before he caught up to the insinuation, “well, how about that.” He tucked the shirt in and pushed his hair back away from his face. “First thing, I need my own clothes, where’s Steve, Jarvis?”

“He is in your bedroom, sir.” Why wouldn’t he be?

# B SIDE

:  
Natasha had _not_ (at least) gotten caught up on the part of the story where Tony was a man now. It was a relief, this many phone calls in, to have someone that didn’t _care_. She skipped straight over protesting how Tony had been recast and immediately fell into, “what are we thinking? Science? Magic?”

“I know some people who think those are the same thing,” Steve said. He was rubbing his forehead again, willing a headache to form and failing. It wasn’t necessarily that he wanted to be in pain; but that he wanted the sensation of a gathering storm to come to an end. It was there in his skull, filling up with clouds, producing no thunder and no lightning. “I don’t know. I didn’t even wake up until he did—I didn’t feel anything unusual. We didn’t do anything unusual. There was no weather. No indication that anything was wrong and—just not the Tony I went to bed with.”

“Shit,” Natasha whispered. “Who are we putting on this?”

“I called Banner, he says it’s not his field—Thor is coming to the party, maybe he’ll know something about it.” A polite knock interrupted him, Steve called, “it’s open,” and still there was hesitation before the door opened. 

“Is that him?” Natasha asked through the phone, as if she could see him if she concentrated hard enough (and maybe she could, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d hacked into the security feed). “I want to meet him.”

“Thanks for the clothes,” Tony said. He was awkward, and shoeless, taking up space across the room. “Your shirt,” he said with a general motion at his own chest, “I assume?”

“She has some T-shirts, I didn’t know what you’d like,” Steve said. He didn’t tell Natasha he had to go so much as hang up on her with a swipe of his thumb and trust she understood there were more pressing matters. “The pants fit. She likes the pockets.”

“The pockets are handy,” Tony agreed. He picked up a picture frame off the dresser and nodded at it. “She’s not bad looking. Maybe a little more feminine than I usually consider myself, but there’s definitely some pretty aspects—I was thinking,” he set the frame down again. “We can’t do anything about this,” he motioned back and forth between them, “until we can gather the data.”

“I asked Jarvis to start compiling everything.”

“Good,” Tony agreed, “I don’t have shoes.” His hands were down in his pockets again.

“Oh, right,” Steve said. “I could loan you a pair.”

“So, we can go buy something that fits me better than this.” Tony ran his tongue across his lips and shrugged off the suggestion as nothing. 

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “Yes. We should; we can’t do anything about this,” and he motioned between them the way Tony had, “until tonight anyway. I called everyone, they’ll be there. Pepper won’t be happy that we’re leaving her to deal with the party guests, but she’ll understand. Happy’ll be there.”

Tony nodded along with everything he said. “Great, good. Let’s do it.”

Steve gave Tony the first pair of shoes he pulled out of the closet and the man accepted them with grace considering how horrified he looked about the sneakers. Rather than protest (or question) he just nodded and slid them on his feet. 

“These aren’t as bad as I expected,” he announced halfway to the garage. “Oh, my babies,” he said when arrived. He reached out like he couldn’t help it, ran his fingers across the glossy paint job of the nearest car with the exact same reverence his wife did. And he made exactly the same face, the sour frown of resignation, when they stopped in front of the truck. “Cap,” this Tony who barely knew him, “did I know about this before the wedding?”

“You bought it for me.” He motioned back at the other cars, the sleek, small beautiful machines. “We can take one of those if you want, but the paparazzi have been known to swarm any time they see one.”

“We’ll take your stupid truck,” Tony said. He went around to the passenger side and climbed into the cab. “Not bringing your shield?” he asked.

“I wasn’t anticipating running into any super villains at the mall,” Steve said. There it was again, that spike of worry about the world his wife had been thrown into. It was small and pointed, like a burr that got trapped inside a boot, digging into the meat of his calf. “I try not to take it anywhere I don’t want to start a fight.”

Tony snorted. “I’ve never known you to turn down a fight.”

“Not all fights are worth fighting,” but more importantly, “seatbelt.”

Tony laughed to himself, at some joke he didn’t feel like sharing, as he pulled the seat belt around and buckled it. When he was finished he put his hands on his thighs and looked at him expectantly, “I’m all ready, Cap.” 

They were all the way out of the drive before Tony said, “all of them are coming? All the Avengers?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered, “It’s your birthday; they were already coming. This is just them coming earlier. I can’t _call_ Thor but I left a message with Maria Hill about Dr. Selvig and Jane Foster. I don’t _know_ what happened but there aren’t many people I know that are smarter than them, and you and Bruce. If it’s science, you can figure it out and if it’s not—”

“You can punch it?” Tony prompted.

Steve looked over at him, to see the tight-tight-muscles of his jaw and the shake of his head. “If necessary. If it would help,” he agreed. “You don’t like this other me, do you?”

Tony shrugged. “What’s not to like. You’re Captain America. You’re _perfect_.” Before they could make the attempt at any other conversation (and fail) Tony pointed at the dash, “can we listen to music? I’d like to listen to music.”

“Yeah. We can listen to music.” He’d been working his way through the whole history of jazz (per Tony’s request), he was all set to agree to listen to whatever Tony wanted as soon as the music started but Tony just smiled at it. He leaned back into the seat with his eyes closed. Steve kept his right hand on his thigh, reminded it and himself and the universe, not to go wandering over looking for a hand to hold.

# A SIDE

:  
The interrogation suite had the pretense of equality. The table was set precisely in the center of the room. There were two chairs. There were no mirrored windows. 

Natasha sat on one side with a comfortable smile on her pretty face. No matter the universe, no matter the circumstance, there was really no denying that Natasha was a beautiful woman. She had the sort of face that demanded to be stared at, the exact sort of smile that could have led any person straight to hell. 

The longer Tony stared at her, the more the image blurred, the more it seemed there were no differences between the Natasha she’d left in her world and this one that smiled at her with untamed contempt. Maybe there minute differences: a different hairstyle, a different shade of lipstick, a more precise bit of eyeliner but the broad strokes were all the same. Natasha was the same (physically). “Still sore?” Tony asked as she touched her fingers to her own neck.

Natasha mirrored the gesture, “friends don’t shoot friends with sleep darts, Tony.” 

Not in most circles, at least. It wouldn’t have surprised her a bit to know this clusterfuck of imposters went around regularly shooting one another with whatever they happened to have on hand. “I suppose that means we aren’t friends, _Ms. Romanoff._ ”

“Aren’t we?” was perfectly innocent. “Tony’s my friend. You say you’re Tony. Shouldn’t we be friends?” The transition was so smooth it was nearly transparent; Natasha had shifted her body from aggressive to inviting and her voice had lost its edge. In one second she’d gone from a stand off to a come on. It was now, and had always been, truly impressive to watch Natasha work. There was nobody better.

“I’ve seen the footage, sweet heart. You’re not his friend.” Tony leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell Steven to bring me two cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake and I’ll answer any question he has. I think communication is important and I have every intention to communicate my every emotion directly to his face.”

It was gone again, all the softness that Natasha had manifested. In Tony’s world, the real one, the good one, Natasha and Steve were friends and co-workers, a perfectly genial set of mates. It was different here, like all things were, more violent and less tolerant. “There’s not a lot of people that call him Steven. Most of us like to call him Steve.”

“He doesn’t like being called Steven?”

Natasha shook her head with her face all squished up in a good impersonation at friendly disapproval. “No, I don’t think he does.”

Tony shrugged, “I can’t imagine he enjoyed having his arm broken either.” That didn’t strike Natasha as funny. “All the same, Steven is a big boy and he can handle it.”

“You attacked him. Why would we allow you in the same room as him?”

“You flatter me.” Tony didn’t uncross her arms but shift how she was sitting on the chair so she could glance up at the camera. It was only the obvious one; if this other Tony was half as diligent as she tried to be he would have hidden at least another two in the room. “I like to think I’m impressive,” she rolled the sleeve of her T-shirt up enough to flex her bicep, “but I don’t think I could take him in a bare-knuckle fight.” She smiled sweetly as she added, “not in these clothes.”

That wasn’t the point; it wasn’t even approaching the point. (How frustrating must that be, to come with intimidation and be greeted with humor. It looked frustrating.) “I don’t think you understand the gra—”

“I appreciate the song and dance,” Tony said. She leaned forward so her forearms were against the edge of the table. “I’ve been tortured before. I know how it goes. I know you’re capable of it if the need arises. I _also_ know that Steven would _not_ allow the torture of a woman.” Tony cocked an eyebrow up when she said it, let her lips curl up into a smile. It wasn’t exactly a checkmate but it was enough of moment it knocked Natasha off center for a second. “There’s something to be said for that nineteen forties misogyny. So, tell him, I want two cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake and I’ll answer any question he asks me.”

Natasha leaned back in her chair with her fingers spread on the table top. There was pure murder in her face but she didn’t speak. 

Tony leaned back to mirror the stance, let her fingertips drum across the table top. “Friday,” she said.

“Sir?”

“Turn the music back on.” It came through the speakers like pure golden honey, filling up the room with warmth that no amount of Natasha’s impressive cold stare could match. Tony sighed into the music, let it suffuse the whole of her body and tipped her head back as she slid her eyes closed. (And she thought of _home_ and not of _this_.)

Natasha didn’t leave immediately. She didn’t move. She didn’t tell Friday to stop the music. She just sat across the table imposing her anger and her implied threat on the room. It was a careful balancing act, paying-attention-just-enough to protect herself if she had to and not-caring-at-all with enough authenticity to achieve the desired result. 

It happened, one or six, or fourteen songs later. Natasha got up and left. The door locks engaged with a gentle whirr of machine parts and Tony opened her eyes just enough to smile at the camera watching her. 

# B Side

  
Steve, doting husband, had volunteered to hold the bags of extra clothes they had purchased under the pretense of not knowing how long Tony’s stay would be. It was a nice gesture on the heels of a hundred nice gestures that had made up his entire day. Tony wasn’t hiding in the family bathroom off to the side of the food court (ten minutes into the lunch rush) but he wasn’t hurrying through the process of changing his clothes. Setting aside the sanitation concerns regarding getting naked in public restrooms, he was taking a small minute to collect himself.

It was hard to know which version of Steve annoyed him more, the pretentious prick with perfect teeth he’d left in charge of the Avengers yesterday or the one that was holding the bags outside the bathroom door undoubtedly smiling at angry Mothers with toddler children complaining about proper bathroom usage. There was no mistaking exactly where Tony stood in his own universe, no confusion on how he fit into the team (he didn’t, not anymore, not with all the new recruits). 

Tony didn’t have to wonder, or guess, what his Steve thought of him because the only thing the bastard didn’t wear on his face was his dark side. (That was, of course, assuming Steve was interesting enough to have a dark side. Assuming he was human enough.) This thing wearing Steve Roger’s face was grating on his nerves because it didn’t matter how he poked it, he didn’t get the response he wanted.

“Tony,” Steve said through the door, “there’s a line forming.”

There was a line forming and one could not be discourteous. He unbuttoned the collar of the white shirt halfway down his chest and pulled the whole thing over his head. The T-shirt fit better, the jacket wasn’t loose and dragging at his shoulders. He kicked off the borrowed shoes and leaned against the wall long enough to get his socks on (a feat he really preferred to do while sitting) so he could put the new shoes on. It wasn’t a perfect outfit but it was far better than the one he’d started the day with. He rolled the shoes into the shirt and shoved them into the bag he’d brought with him. 

Out in the hall, a line had indeed formed. There was Captain America at the head of the line, looking very solemn and apologetic as he listened to angry woman explain how she had two preschoolers and a baby. The sound she made when Tony came out of the bathroom (all on his own) was almost inhuman.

“We’re very sorry for the inconvenience ma’am,” Steve assured her. He was still looking very sorry about it as they hurried down the line of strollers and away from the delightful smell of public restrooms. Just beyond the foggy grip of dirty diapers, the smell of mass-produced Italian food greeted them like a hammer to the nose. It wasn’t a good smell but it was enough to remind him he hadn’t eaten anything but a doughnut the whole of the day. His liquid midnight snack wasn’t holding him over anymore and there was a whole food court full of easily available food. It was just a matter of figuring out how to suggest they should get something to eat, and he had almost worked out how he wanted to phrase it but Captain Perfect beat him there with a simple, “I’m hungry too.”

It was _obnoxious_ , that what it was. It was _obnoxious_ to have Steve almost smile at the prospect of eating shit food from a mall vendor, _obnoxious_ to be so transparent (or for Steve to be so aware of him) that it was obvious he was hungry. (Maybe it was only obnoxious because it was _right_.) 

“I want a cheeseburger,” Tony said. “Do you eat cheeseburgers?”

“When the occasion calls for it,” Steve said. Like a good husband (just not Tony’s husband) he carried the bags and paid for the food and thanked the servers for their hard work. “You want to eat here?”

No. Someone had recognized Steve—not that it was particularly difficult to recognize the man. Not as if there were many people strolling around the world being physically perfect and painfully polite all at the same time. There were a hundred sets of eyes following their every move so Tony said, “maybe not.”

Steve looked over his shoulder, “ok,” he said to the crowd or Tony, or both. 

Steve took them to an overlook, not too far from the house (close enough that one might have wondered why he didn’t just drive them to the house). He plucked the bag of lukewarm burgers out of the console between them and got out of the truck without so much as a single word of explanation. Tony watched him toss the bag in the truck bed, watched him climb in after it and couldn’t figure out if the desire to eat was great enough to participate in the charade.

(Hunger often beat his best intentions.) 

Tony climbed into the back of the truck about the same time Steve managed to unwrap a single cheeseburger. The man was staring at it like he hated nothing in the world with the singular, unmatched focus that he hated the combination of bun, pickles, cheese and hamburger. His intense hatred of mustard was so great he closed his fist around the sandwich until the mutilated mess of it slid up between his fingers and fell all over his perfectly good khakis. Tony on the corner by the tailgate, where he could escape if he needed to. “We could have gotten Chinese,” Tony said.

Steve was shaking his head with his shoulders shaking like he was laughing but there was no sound coming from his chest.

“Pizza,” Tony offered.

“It’s your birthday,” Steve said. He shook the hamburger chunks off his palm and pulled out a handful of napkins to start mopping up the mustard-and-ketchup smeared all between his fingers. “I had the day planned.” Steve let his head hang forward, closed his eyes and appreciated the grand unfairness of the world. When he opened them again, he picked up the bag with the remaining food and tossed it to him. “What were you going to do?”

“Sleep, drink probably. Have a very civil dinner date with Pepper, who was going to pretend she wasn’t angry at me for creating a murder-bot that almost destroyed the planet.” He shrugged that off. “I don’t blame her. I haven’t been my best self. I made it almost—two years? Without endangering her, myself and the planet. That’s a personal best.”

Steve didn’t look impressed. “You’re _dating_ Pepper?” 

“She’s out of my league.” He pulled one of the cheeseburgers out of the bag. It was greasy and warm in exactly the way he was craving. (Very suddenly, very strangely.) “You don’t think it’s a good idea? Me dating Pepper?”

“I’m biased,” Steve said. “I don’t think you should be dating anyone. Just,” was an attempt to be fair. Steve was squinting his perfect blue eyes to the left, watching the sun in the sky and shaking his head, “I can’t see it working out with Pepper.”

Truth was, two thirds of the time he couldn’t see it working out with Pepper either. It was getting more-and-more obvious, that quiet, empty space at his side. The scripted appearances only relationship they were evolving. Tony couldn’t counter a solid argument, so he settled for: “this isn’t bad. You should have tried eating one.” 

“We’re not even friends?” Steve asked.

Tony pulled the last napkin out of the bag to wipe his face. “You heard me say I created a murder bot that almost destroyed the planet a minute ago, right? You didn’t like that. You don’t really like most of the things I do.” He shrugged, “I don’t try to figure out why. We work together when we have to, we give each other space when we don’t.”

“Murder bot?”

“Not a memory I’d like to revisit. Maybe if I’m here next month, I’ll tell you all about it.” 

Steve didn’t push, or prod, or complain. He just nodded his head and grabbed the side of the truck so he could pull himself up to sit on it. With his elbows on his knees, he looked lost in the sunlight, just a stranger trying to scrub mustard out from between his fingers. 

“When’s this party starting?”

“I asked everyone that could to meet us at the house around six, the party starts at seven and I have to at least go—they should too. You don’t have to.” Steve balled up the napkins and threw the mess of them into the bag. “This other me,” seemed like the closest he’d come to the man that shared his face, “is he going to be a problem for her?”

“I don’t think he cares,” Tony said. “Unless she went looking for him? Would she go looking for him?”

Steve shrugged, “if she thought he could help.”

“He’d help a lady in need.”

Steve snorted. “ _My_ Tony Stark is many things but none of them fit the term _lady_.” Still, he seemed more at ease than he had been a minute ago. “We should head back. Natasha is probably already breaking in.”

# A SIDE

:  
Natasha had brought him the hamburgers with a shake of her head. “I don’t think you should do this. She’s unstable.”

“It’s Tony,” sounded a little more real every time Steve repeated it. “I can handle Tony.” Natasha hadn’t answered out loud but stared pointedly at the splint on his arm and the ice pack he had pressed against the forming bruise on his chest. “I’m sure there’s an explanation.” (With Tony there was always an explanation.)

He’d made the walk alone, not by forbidding anyone to follow him but because nobody had tried. The door opened when he stopped outside of it and the music that had been bleeding out of the speakers came to a sharp halt. There was the woman, this _other_ Tony, looking perfectly composed with her feet propped up on the table and one of her arms slung over the back of the chair.

“I thought I was getting stood up,” Tony said.

Steve pushed the door shut with his good elbow. “I wouldn’t break a dinner date,” he answered. The bag was still hot on the bottom when he dropped it on the table, the milkshake was half-melted but cold enough. He waited until she pulled her feet off the table before he sat down. “Why are you here?”

“If I knew that, Steven,” she said as she pulled the burgers out of the bag with unashamed anticipation, “I wouldn’t _still_ be here. I woke up here. You remember what that’s like, don’t you? One minute you’re somewhere you recognize, the next you wake up in a funhouse mirror. Everything looks something like what it used to but it’s not the same.”

(Oh yes, he remembered exactly what that was like. He remembered all the little things Fury got wrong. The game, the hair, the bra—he remembered it all.) “Why did you attack us?” was meant to pull Tony back into the conversation. Conversations with Tony had that funny way of derailing themselves half-way-through. 

Not like this, not with Tony bent forward against the table, biting into a cheeseburger with a happy hum of appreciation. She closed her eyes as she chewed; when he dropped his hand on the table her eyes slid open just enough to look at him, just enough he could see how amused she was by him. (As if he, as if _this_ were some great joke.) “Not _us_ , just _you_ Steven.” But she was holding up her hand to forestall any protest, she was conceding before he could argue it when she added, “and the witch.”

“ _Why_ ,” Steve repeated.

“I saw something I didn’t like,” she said. 

He breathed in through his nose and out again. Once, then twice, then three times: “you said you’d answer my questions.”

Maybe he had the misconception that she was looking at him before, and she hadn’t been. The way her eyes moved, her whole body shifted just a little and her lips quirked up at the edge. She was eating the cheeseburger like a feral dog with her pinkies held out at the sides. It lasted only for a breath or two, the intense focus of her entire body taking in the sight and sound and smell of his. Then she dropped the burger on the paper wrapper and dug into the bag to pull out a napkin. Every motion was unhurried, unbothered by the question and condemnation hanging over their heads.

“If you’re not going to—” _answer my questions_ , Steve meant to say but she silenced him with a single finger held up while she wiped her mouth and her finger tips with the paper napkin. Once she’d finished, she took a sip of the milkshake (and found it unpleasant, apparently) and then set it down as well. “Are you finished?” he asked.

“Steven, I’m not your child.” She leaned back instead of forward, her body the very picture of casual, stretched out long and loose and unimpressed. “I don’t appreciate being spoken to like an unruly grade schooler.”

“I didn—”

“You did,” Tony cut in. “That’s not my problem. My problem is figuring out how I got here and how I’m going to get back. If your Tony puts up with this,” she motioned at the whole space between them, “that’s his business. I try not to judge.”

Steve snorted at that. The lapsed into silence. She was smiling at the edge of her lips, one of her hands across her thigh, the other elbow hooked over the back of the chair. “You said you saw something you didn’t like,” he prompted, “what does that mean?”

“Do you know his suits record everything?”

“I did not,” Steve said. “But it doesn’t surprise me.”

“It doesn’t surprise me either. I’m a scientist, primarily. I like to deal with observable facts—I like to make my assumptions on things I have seen to be true when I can.” She leaned forward then, grabbed the chair between her legs and pulled it after her. There was a spread of food between them, the odor of mustard to every one of her words. “I don’t know what the witch showed him; you can imagine it’s hard to capture nightmares on camera. I know what it did to him—”

“Wanda showed all of us things we didn’t want to see—” (And he was just about fed up constantly having to discuss the matter.)

“But she’s on your team?”

“She’s a kid. They took advantage of her; she’s not the same person anymore.” Steve motioned out the door, out the corridor, out of the basement, to wherever he thought his Tony might have been. “The Tony that belongs in this universe, he understands. Whatever Wanda has done is in the past—”

Tony’s grin was pointed at the edges. Her hands were pressed against the table top with her fingertips going white from the pressure. “You stood by. You stood and you watched and you put all the blame on him.”

“ _He_ built Ultron, who else is there to blame?”

She laughed like a poor sport, like a bark that mutated into something like a howl. It was quick-and-sharp and over with her fist smacking into the table top. It didn’t startle him but he wasn’t expecting it; he wasn’t expecting it to radiate through his left arm resting against the edge for the spark of ache. “He built Ultron by himself,” she repeated, “he didn’t get help? He didn’t have Bruce—”

“He convinced Bruce to do it.”

“So, Bruce isn’t to blame because he was coerced.”

“I didn’t say that.” He lifted a hand to try to slow the flow of words (a wasted pursuit in any conversation with Tony, apparently regardless of what universe he came from). “You’re taking things out of context.”

“You can’t blame Bruce because it was _Tony_ ’s idea, because _Tony_ talked him into and we can’t blame the witch that filled him up with the idea because _she_ was being taken advantage of,” Tony said. She paused, like waiting for him to draw a conclusion.

“Tony has a history of creating things that he can’t control,” Steve said.

Her eyes slid closed, her head was turned slightly like she was listening for a faint sound. With one of her hands up and her fingers half curled into a fist, anyone might have thought it was a posture of patience. But in the very next minute, she opened her eyes with a half-pronounced, “fuck it,” like she was giving in. Then her arms swept the food and the milkshake to the side in one long gesture, her hands wrapped around the end of the table and she pulled it off the floor and shoved it over so it fell against the wall. The metal top slapped against the concrete ground with a clatter of noise. He was half-up to his feet with his good arm moving to protect his face when he saw the chair flying at his body. It struck him across the side when he turned. 

“Stop it,” he shouted at her.

Her response was to punch him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t read the intent in her body (because he could) or that he was chivalrous enough to stand still and let a woman beat him. It was that he hadn’t _expected_ it, even when all the signs were there. Both of her hands balled up in his shirt and he found himself pushed against a wall, with his hands pushed against the center of his chest (his palm pressed up to what had to be an arc-reactor under her shirt) to hold her off. “You _don’t_ have a team, Captain Rogers. You’re not a leader. I watched you stand by on the tapes. I watched you look at him with disgust. You invited the witch that stuck her fingers in his brain onto your team and if that doesn’t strike you as maybe the wrong choice you are nothing like the man I know. Because the Captain America I know? He’s got things you haven’t even heard of, son.” 

Steve shoved her back and she stumbled back with a fresh laugh. 

The door was pulled open by Natasha and Steve just behind her. And Tony was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Guess I was wrong,” she said to Natasha (not him), “these clothes work just fine.” She eyed the glowing blue lights on Natasha’s wrist with a note of actual respect before she bent forward to pick up the chair and put it right. “Since you lost Bruce, is there any chance you still have access to Thor? Jane Foster? Erik Selvig?”

Steve fixed his shirt and picked up his own chair. “Thor went back to Asgard.”

Tony nodded. She was sitting on the chair, dipping to the side to pick up the cheeseburger that was still in the bag. There she was, smiling at Natasha as she unwrapped it, completely oblivious or completely unconcerned with the danger she was in.

“We’re fine,” Steve said. He grabbed the table by the leg and turned it back over. Natasha raised an eye at him and Sam was making a face behind her back. “We’re _fine_ ,” he repeated. They left again, pulling the door closed until the lock engaged and it was only him and this woman that was-and-was _not_ Tony. “I don’t know where you’re from, but we generally don’t attack our teammates in this world.”

“So that thing where Thor picked Tony up by the throat, that was just foreplay? The part where you all stood around and blamed him for creating Ultron that was a circle jerk? A gang bang?”

“Nobody _attacked_ Tony,” Steve repeated.

“Wanda attacked Tony.”

There was a point in every conversation with Tony when it became obvious there was no purpose in continuing, that they could not communicate regardless of their attempts. It was a bit like a strategic retreat, they had to part ways and count their wounded. 

This woman smiled at him, “that’s a face I recognize. I’m a smart woman so I’m betting he’s a smart man and he can make just about anything he sets his mind to. I’ll let you blame him for filling the pot with water, but the witch started the fire and it was Loki’s scepter that made it explode.”

“ _Tony_ made Ultron,” Steve repeated. “We all experience things we don’t like; we all saw things we didn’t want to see. Nobody else created a robot that almost destroyed the planet. People died, the ones that didn’t lost their homes. A city that used to exist doesn’t anymore. There has to be accountability.”

“I’m not up to date on all my history, Steven. Did you find out Hydra was hiding in Shield?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

Tony licked a bit of bread or burger out from between her teeth and cheek before she continued, “do me a favor? Tell me who killed Howard and Maria Stark?”

There was no explaining the way his chest went cold, how all the blood in his body seemed to momentarily come to a perfect stop. It was bait, and a trap, and an answer she already had judging by the way she watched him. Steve looked sideways at the camera and then back at her, “the Winter Soldier has been credited.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Tony corrected. “Your buddy, Bucky.”

“Did you have a point?”

“He was your friend, wasn’t he?” Tony was building up to something that Steve didn’t want to see.

“Bucky?”

“Howard,” Tony finished the sandwich and licked her lips. (Steve didn’t answer because it didn’t seem like she needed his contributions anyway.) She looked sideways at where the shake had been once and frowned to find it splattered across the floor. “I don’t blame Bucky for what he did because he didn’t do it because he wanted to. He was being controlled. I don’t blame your Tony for building Ultron because he didn’t do it of sound mind and body. He was being _used_. But hey, why not invite the witch less than a month later. I’m sure she’s different now. You should get Thor to bring his brother by. I know he destroyed New York with an alien invasion but that was a few years back now, and he’s great at parties.” 

“We’re done,” Steve said.

“Yes, we are,” Tony said. “I’m not your prisoner. I’m not staying here as one. You want to help me, that’s fantastic. You don’t? I’m a smart girl. I know how to figure things out.” She got up and motioned at the door, “Friday?” the locks turned and the door opened.

# B SIDE

Steve was wearing the clothes she’d picked out for him, left hanging neatly on his side of the closet. It was a suit for a beach party (nobody’s going to swim anyway) and he’d made some attempt at protest because he wasn’t particularly fond of suits. At least not the type with ties and vests and neat creases. 

“So that’s him?” Natasha said. She was sitting on the end of the bed, nursing a glass of (wine or beer or liquor, he never asked), dressed to turn heads at the party. “He’s—”

There were several adjectives that Steve might have used to best describe the man who had woken up on his wife’s side of the bed. Most of them weren’t very nice (rude, abrasive, mouthy), and some of them weren’t terribly kind (arrogant, brash, flighty) but at the end of the day there was only really the fact that he was some version of Tony. “He is,” Steve agreed. He sat in the chair across the room to pull his shoes on and ignored the way Natasha was watching him over the lip of her glass. “Did they sound like they had any ideas?”

“Thor suggested you check the mattress for scroll work,” Natasha said. “He said something about there being many mystical portals in and out of the world but he didn’t actually address the part where this man appears to be from a parallel world.”

“Did Jane have any ideas?”

“Jane was checking for weather phenomenon. She was talking to her assistant about reviewing the tapes of your bedroom from last night. I hope you had sex because that woman needs the thrill,” Natasha shook her head.

“Jane?”

“The assistant.”

Steve snorted. He finished tying his shoes and sat back in the chair. It was almost too small to fit in comfortably, not nearly deep enough to lean into. He ran his fingernail down the seam on the side and tried to figure out anything to say that felt like it was worth saying. “Of course we had sex.”

“Maybe I’ll watch the tapes too,” Natasha said. She winked at him with a dirty smile that should have made him smile back, but the effort was exhausting. When the joke felt flat, she got up, stood by the bed touching the things Tony had left behind. “How are you holding up?”

“I just want her back.”

“What are you going in the mean time?” The skirt she was wearing swished around her legs when she turned. Her finger was pointing out the open door, down to the main floor where the gathering of bright minds were trying-their-best. He could hear Thor and Erik and Jane all talking one over the other but he didn’t hear Tony. “He’s a mess.”

“It sounds like he’s been through a lot. Hey,” since he was trying to remember every bit of history Tony had mentioned throughout the day, “did we stop a terrorist called the Mandarin?”

“Aldrich Killian,” Natasha said. “He was using veterans as science experiments. Extremis?”

“Oh,” he remembered that guy; he hated that guy. Steve stood up and fixed his cuffs, ran his hand down his shirt to make sure it was flat and pointed his thumb out the door as he said (very quietly), “Tony said the Mandarin destroyed his house, this house.”

“Why?” Natasha asked.

Steve shrugged. He spread his arms, “how do I look?”

Natasha looked him over and smiled, “you look like she planned to strip you naked and fuck you on the beach.” That might have been funny too, if things were different, but it wasn’t funny here. “Maybe he’ll just go to sleep and tomorrow she’ll be back.”

Steve didn’t even need to tell her how unlikely he found that to be. She just slid her arm around his back and leaned her head against his shoulder. It was a nice gesture, a steadying sort of gesture, before he had to go downstairs to face everyone again. Before a party full of excuses, and Pepper smiling her way through lying to every person she spoke to.

# B Side

At some point, a man had to have enough honesty to admit that he was of no use. He’d spent an hour off-center to a conversation about the possibility of inter-dimensional travel (about twenty minutes of which was Jane patting Thor’s arm every time he added something helpful that didn’t apply to the situation. _Dimensions_ , Jane said, _not realms_ ). It wasn’t that Tony couldn’t follow; it wasn’t that he couldn’t have contributed.

It was just that, they were all there in a semi-circle, engaged and busy, each of them looking precisely like the people they had been yesterday when he was still living in a world he recognized. His head was a spinning top of half-thought observations, little things like: 

He’d never really had a conversation with Jane Foster, never really had a reason to seek her out beyond an obligatory hello if they were ever in the same place. He’d read her articles in passing but he hadn’t lingered. She was beautiful with pink cheeks, talking about the possibilities of parallel travel and arguing with Selvig (a man that Tony had one or more conversations with) regarding what kind of phenomenon they would expect to find in correlation with their theories. 

Thor was nodding along, interrupting to put in a big of ancient magic-science now and again. Even if it wasn’t very helpful, they didn’t interrupt him. It was easy to forget, in the heat of battle, that Thor was older than all of them together. He was a prince and a demi-God, full of eons of knowledge that maybe could and maybe couldn’t help. It didn’t matter where Tony was from, what sort of potential Thor had, beyond his ability to hit things with a hammer and control lightning. 

Bruce protested he wasn’t useful but he didn’t shy away from the debate nonetheless, and now and again, he looked directly at Tony with a pinch of pain in his face. 

Then there was Steve Rogers wearing a tailored suit, looking like a pin-up poster, walking right up to the gathering with a regretful face. “I hate to interrupt,” he said. (And it looked like he genuinely did hate to interrupt.) “We should head over to the party. Pepper’s going to meet us and brief us on the story regarding where our Tony is.”

Natasha was hovering just behind him, wearing a pretty dress, staring straight at Tony through the crowd. Her lips were quirked up in a neutral smile. It maybe was, or maybe was _not_ a threat. 

“Do not worry,” Thor was (suddenly) saying to him. He clapped his hand on Tony’s shoulder in a friendly way. “We will find a solution.” Jane was right there with him nodding along, smiling at him in a way that must have been reassuring to someone. 

One by one they stopped to tell him they were going to figure it out before they headed for the door. Bruce lingered with his hands rubbing together, all nerves and uncertainty. “This must be overwhelming for you.”

“It’s certainly not underwhelming,” Tony agreed. “I would say I’m sufficiently whelmed.”

Bruce tried to smile but it didn’t quite make it. “We’ll figure it out. We always figure it out.” Then he left with another pained smile. He passed Steve still standing there looking across the suddenly empty space at him, Bruce said, “you coming?” to Steve who nodded.

The house was silent and settling; Steve said, “are you going to be okay?”

(And well, look at that, there hadn’t even been a point in trying not to answer that question after all. Trust Captain Rogers to hunt a man down with dogged determination.) Tony’s hands were in someone else’s pants pockets, he was standing in a living room that was-and-wasn’t his own, watching people that weren’t his friends (but looked like them) walk out to attend a birthday party for a woman who had his name and his life story. He was _fantastic_. “Everything’s hunky-dory,” Tony said. (If only for how it made Steve wrinkle up his whole face in disapproval of the word.) “Do you think she would mind if I took a peek around the lab. It was designed to solve problems like this. I could make a pass at it in the bedroom but it’s in everyone’s best interest to have the most tools—” He wasn’t interrupted, he just ran out of things he wanted to say. 

Steve (her husband, the protector of her things and her good name) didn’t seem like he wanted to allow it but still he nodded. “Yeah. Under the circumstances I think she’d understand. Just, try to put things back where you found them. She says there’s a purpose for the,” he motioned in a circle to indicate everything beneath their feet, “chaos.”

“Sure,” Tony agreed. “Go, have fun. Tell Pepper I’m sorry.” They parted ways with awkward smiles: Steve to go and keep up pretenses, and Tony down the stairs and into the lab. He’d rebuilt one (or two) since he’d lost this one. They were technologically superior but they were lacking that certain sentimentality. “Wake up,” he whispered to the room, “Daddy’s home.”

The room reacted to the sound of his voice, the screens flickered on and Dum-E (precious, stupid Dum-E) lifted up with a whirr and a hopeful beep. Tony breathed in the smell of the lab: a bit of old coffee, a great deal of machine parts, and a certain smell of baby soft leather. It was like living in a memory. There was nobody there to observe him, nobody to follow him around looking wounded, no reason not to take a look at the suits standing up in their display cases.

“Jarvis, remind me.” There was the Mark II looking outdated but collecting no dust. “I was kidnapped?”

“Yes sir. You were taken hostage by a terrorist organization that referred to itself as the Ten Rings as part of a plot engineered by Obidiah Stane to take control of Stark Industries. After approximately two months and eighteen days you escaped captivity using the Mark I and were rescued by Colonel Rhodes.” 

The Mark III was looking good for a suit that had been more or less destroyed by the time he took it off. The paint job had been redone but not all of the dings and dents had been fixed. It looked good standing there, a very pleasant reminder that he’d survived. It had been years since he’d thought of Stane, since he’d lingered on the moment the man who had almost been a father had tried to kill him. (Best not to linger on that thought.) “I shut down weapons manufacturing?”

“Yes sir.”

“How did I fix the palladium poisoning?” He left the suits to their silent sentry duty. Dum-E turned to follow him moving around the room, making little noises when he paused at a countertop to pick up and set down the tools left laying out. 

“Natasha Romanoff was sent to assess your fitness to be a member of the Avengers Initiative. Upon the completion of her assessment, Director Fury reached out to you with information regarding a potential new element theorized by Howard Stark.” 

“Where did it change?” he whispered to the poster hanging on the wall. It was the Iron Man’s face, artfully done. He remembered hanging it when he thought he was dying and there it was in this stranger’s lab. Dum-E mumbled an inquiring noise. “What was the result of Natasha’s assessment?”

“You were recommended for inclusion in the Initiative. You did not officially join until the following year,” Jarvis said.

Well. Ask and receive answers. Tony collapsed into the chair and tapped his fingers on the keypad in front of him. It turned beautifully blue, helpfully lighting up should he want to use it. He smiled and shook his head (and reminded himself that none of this—not a single part of it—was his). “When did I meet Cap?”

“You were introduced to Captain Rogers in December of 2011.” Jarvis was quiet a moment and then, as if he had been waiting the entire day to ask, “sir, are you feeling well?”

“I’m great, Jarvis. I’m living the dream.” He sank back into the chair and smiled at how nicely it leaned back, how well he fit into it. “Where do I keep the liquor, Jarvis?”

“It has been exactly three years since your last drink, sir.” He must have been instructed to remind her of that; it felt like a poke to remind her that she had given it up; that she didn’t need to fall back into the habit (and why would she? Her life had turned out beautifully). 

“Tell you what,” Tony said. “We’ll just leave this one off the record. Where’s the liquor?”

Jarvis didn’t like that (very much, judging by the delay in his answer) but he answered, “the alcohol is kept upstairs, sir.” 

Yes, of course it was.

# A SIDE

Nobody attempted to stop her from taking the suit; that said enough about their concept of crisis management to make her sick. (Then again, in the end, she would have gotten the suit back even if they had put up a fight. But at least a fight might have said something a bit nicer about their concept of what was an enemy and what was a friend.) 

The bedroom she woke up in that morning was dark and empty when she came back to it. Standing in the doorway, feeling weighted and _slow_ , it felt like the single most painful part of the day. This wasn’t her room; this wasn’t the day she had planned. This wasn’t the world she belonged it—and standing there with her arms hanging off her shoulders (feeling useless, feeling heavy) the anger that had sustained her bled into something gray. There was a dark pit in the back of her head, a whispery place that filled up with nightmares when left unattended. She’d spent the past three years channeling all that energy into _better_ things but now and again, those spindle-armed-things crept out of the well, they filled up her head with monsters.

“We don’t have time for that,” she whispered to the gathering despair. The trouble was, she didn’t have anything _but_ time. An unknown quantity of time in an unknown land and she’d introduced herself to her only allies with _violence_ (nothing like letting rage win over sense). 

But no. No. None of that. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and cleared her throat. There was a matter of dirty clothes on the floor, and careless debris on the tables to be attended to. She worked methodically, tidying up to distract herself from half-discovered regrets.

(Like Steve’s stupid face the second before she wrenched the shield up and to the side. The shock that anyone was smart enough to avoid a target as shiny and obvious as a big round shield. The wide-eyed- _surprise_ that made his whole arrogant face look as fresh as a newborn.)

Maybe Tony threw the glass liquor bottle on purpose, maybe she wanted it to shatter inside the trashcan by the wall. Maybe she was just trying to drop it, to remove it from her line of sight. “Fuck,” she said to it, to the bits of glass all over the floor. She was wearing damp socks and no shoes. “Fuck,” was redundant and necessary, felt like it was the only thing worth saying at the moment. Her hands were clenched up in fists and every bit of her body was vibrating. 

“Friday,” she said.

“Sir?” Wasn’t that funny, now that she had a few seconds to think about it, that this AI she’d never met had not once questioned who she was. That was funny, how it was _funny_ that the jackass wearing Steve’s face had looked at her with absolutely certainty that she was-exactly-who-she-said. She was a precisely maintained beard, a few years of unanswered exhaustion and at least an inch of shoulders short of being _exactly_ the same as the man who took up her place in this world. (Probably, also, several inches of penis short but she didn’t want to make assumptions on that matter.) 

“Is there a gym?” 

“Yes sir.”

Tony left the broken glass and the half-cleaned room for the bright-lit-beauty of the gym. She hadn’t ever, exactly, been opposed to learning how to fight. It had been a pastime with Rhodey, sparring on gym mats (and mattresses, and tile floors, in dorm rooms and club bathrooms, wherever she could incite him into a decent fight) and a great time-killer between projects and board meetings. She’d taken it up in earnest in the weeks after she put Obidiah in the ground (in that space getting caught up in the glory of being a real god damn hero and the realization that if the shrapnel didn’t kill her the palladium poisoning would). 

The punching bag hanging from the ceiling had the _distinct_ look of being more of an ornament than anything. (Of course it did; here in this lonely little world, full of sour things, there was nobody around to bother with the damn thing.)

“Friday, play me something loud,” she said while she taped her hands. 

Tony was just getting warmed up, just starting to exorcise that demon that lived in the back of her head. (Thinking things on repeat like, _this was my god-damn birthday_ and how some-other-Tony was taking up space with her _fucking_ husband. And Steve, her _Steve_ was probably working overtime to figure it out. There was a party to manage and no wife to show up to it, she could imagine him in the fucking tailored suit, looking apologetic and lying through his pretty white teeth. He wasn’t good at it—he couldn’t be left alone to lie to people. So, it was Pepper smiling with apologies, making up some story or another that Natasha would circulate through the crowd. It was a motherfucking clusterfuck and who god damn knew what this disaster Tony from this stupid world was doing in her house.) She was screaming at the stupid punching bag, feeling the warm-warm-feeling of well-used-muscles, thinking of all the things she _didn’t_ get today, working around to being able to _think_ it through well enough to _do_ something about it.

The music went dead suddenly, the whole gym echoing with the sudden silence and the strike of her fist against the bag. Tony was dripping sweat, just soaked straight through the shirt, and breathing hard. 

“ _You’re_ her?” Pepper asked from across the room. She was-and-wasn’t the exact same as the best friend Tony had left behind: dressed up like she was expecting a dinner date with a grimace on her face and her voice full of tumbling rocks. 

“I am her,” Tony agreed. She rubbed her face on the hem of the shirt she wore (which did almost nothing). “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yeah,” Pepper agreed. She didn’t seem like she wanted to come closer. That other side of the sparring ring must have been safer. “What happened?”

“Don’t know,” Tony said. She started unwinding the tape (thinking a shower wouldn’t have been entirely out of the question). 

“Are you going to figure it out?” was more accusing than was necessary.

“Trust me when I say that nobody is more motivated to figure this out than I am. You think I want to be here?” She threw the balled up tape on the floor. Tony leaned against the ropes of the training ring, watched Pepper frown at those words. “If your Tony is in my world, he’s fine. I’ll do what I can here, but he has resources that I don’t.”

“Oh,” was Pepper laughing, “what are those?”

“Friends,” Tony said.

That made her frown even harder and she reached out to pick at the rope like she found a bit of lint or fluff or a stray thread in it. “Tony has friends,” was so automatic there was no thinking about it. “You attacked the Avengers’ compound. So, you should know.” There was a particular way that her Pepper always implied disapproval with her voice. A certain way that she smiled at him, that her hair moved when she spoke that spelled out D-A-N-G-E-R for anyone that was smart enough to see the obvious signs. This Pepper was disapproving but it wasn’t a well-choreographed dance. It was condemnation bleeding into her wounded voice. “Rhodey said you broke Steve’s arm.”

“Steven is fine,” Tony said.

“You broke his arm,” she repeated.

“That will heal in two days or less.” It was best not to go into the science of exactly how much force and velocity it took to break Steve’s arm. She’d calculated it back in her own world, when she was still more bitter about the living-breathing-science-experiment (that her father had loved with far more consistency than he’d loved her) than she was interested in making friends with the man. Her Pepper had rolled her eyes about it (but she understood, it was only curiosity, because the man could get thrown through a wall and emerge unharmed), but this Pepper looked like she might have taken it with less humor. “Would you stop frowning at me if I promised you that I know it’s not causing him any significant pain?”

“No,” Pepper said. 

Well, then there was nothing at all that she could do. 

“How are we supposed to trust you? How are we supposed to work with you?” 

That was the stupidest thing that she’d been asked today. Her brain was filling up with rude answers faster than she could think around them. Maybe if it had been Steven standing across the ring from her she would spit them out (one after another), a dozen or two dozen or three dozen little accusations, but it was _Pepper_ looking _heartbroken_. (Tony wondered, again, what her Steve had looked like when he woke up to find her gone, to find a strange man taking up space at his side.) “I want to go home,” Tony said. “That’s all I’m concerned with now.”

Pepper had tears in her eyes, “we were supposed to have dinner,” her hand motioned at her outfit. “He’s not here.”

Tony didn’t laugh (but she might have, if she thought Pepper could have found humor in the terrible). “I was supposed to fuck my husband on a beach.”

That did make her smile, just a little. “You’re married?”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. He’s a great guy.” (Looks a bit like the dick you’ve got masquerading as the leader of the Avengers.) “You and Tony, _your_ Tony, you’re—”

“Dating,” Pepper filled in. (Well, wasn’t that a kick in the pants.) “I can’t believe his clothes fit you.”

“You and me both,” Tony said. She ran her hand up the sweaty shirt, cupped her hands around her breast and shrugged. “Although there are a few key wardrobe items I’m missing.” That made Pepper smile too. “Bra, _underwear_ , maybe some shoes.”

There was Pepper, trying her best, wiping tears away from her eyes. “We can, we can definitely get you those things in the morning. Whatever you need.” She looked like she was trying to smile, to sweep away all the nonsense of the day. “It has been a very long day and I think I should sleep.”

Tony nodded along. “Good night Ms. Potts.”

“Good night,” she answered. Her mouth looked like it was working around to forming the word ‘Tony’ and failing. “Ms. Stark,” she said instead as she just let her hand slid off the rope and walked toward the door with her heels echoing in the quiet of the room.

# B SIDE

It was Pepper, to the side of the party, that touched his arm with her fingertips and said, “you should go. It’s okay. Nobody expected you’d even be here this long.” She meant every word with the sweetest sort of support. It was just that the reasons he wasn’t supposed to stay at the party were very different now than they had been the night before. “I’ve got this,” Pepper assured him.

Steve took the escape she provided him because smiling had made his face feel bruised and he wasn’t sure how many more times he could laugh off the innuendo that he’d finally knocked Tony up. (Really, it was truly amazing how many unique ways people could think up to say the same damn thing.) 

The house felt empty when he let himself in. “Where is he, Jarvis?”

“Mr. Stark is in the guest room, sir.”

That was where Steve found him, sleeping (or passed out) face-down on the bed with all his clothes still on. The bottle he had been drinking from was sitting on the edge of the bedside table. (Steve thought, _at least he’s sleeping_.) There was no way to get the blankets out from under Tony without waking him up so he retrieved a clean one from the linen closet and spread it over him. The man didn’t notice beyond a flinch between his eyebrows that smoothed out again in the next second. “Sleeping on your stomach is going to make your back hurt,” he said. There was no telling if it was true, maybe things were different for this version of Tony. It didn’t matter, he picked the bottle up off the bedside table and took it with him. 

Perhaps the most genuinely unfortunate thing about Erskine’s success was how quickly Steve’s body metabolized alcohol. He couldn’t get drunk on anything short of Thor’s immortal liquor and even that had a short-lived buzz. It didn’t mean he hadn’t given it the old college try now and again. Didn’t mean there wasn’t a kind of phantom comfort in taking a swig of (scotch, tasted like, probably scotch) to ease the uneasiness of the day. He drained the bottle between the guest room and the training room, dropped it in the trash can by the door and started pulling apart the buttons of the suit.

The jacket and the vest he threw in a chair, the shirt was hung over the ropes of the training ring. He left the shoes and his socks in mid-step, just taking up space somewhere between the entrance and his (recently renovated) half of the gym. He thought about punching (the wall, the windows, anything that wouldn’t give) and ended up with both of his fists wrapped around the pull-up bar, leaning his weight forward, trying to find a point of peace.

It was just, Bruce’s quiet, the way he lingered at the edge of the crowd. It was how they were all talking-and-trying-not-to about what had happened and how to fix the problem. In between clusters of guests that were just happy to be invited to a real fine event, every conversation among his friends had been _how_ this could have happened. 

It was only Bruce, rubbing one fist against his other palm, playing the part of the rational-minded pessimist. “We should probably be considering what to do if we cannot reverse this.” It was a painful sentence to say, a terrible one to hear, but it was true too. “We don’t know what he can do, if he is familiar with her suits, with our team—”

Bruce meant, how does this effect the team. (He also meant, _what if we can’t get her back_.) 

Steve wasn’t _ready_ for thoughts like that. It was too damn late in a terrible day, too fucking early to give up yet. Every unhappy little part of him was clinging to the _what-ifs_ and they went in cyclones around his head, breaking apart all his optimistic thoughts.

They would figure it out. They always figured it out.

(But what if they didn’t? What if they couldn’t?)

It didn’t matter tonight; there was nothing to do about it tonight. Tomorrow he would have to look at it, the whole big picture, he’d have to gather the team, he’d have to consult opinions and make an educated decision. He’d have to figure out if Tony could operate the suits if the need arose, if they needed him to, if they could function as a team with an unknown entity. 

(A drunk one, sleeping in a guest room.)

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow they would have to start coming up with contingencies and that left him with tonight and nothing. Nothing to do, nothing to think, nothing to cope with. 

“I thought I’d find you here,” Natasha said. She was lingering in the doorway, wearing the clothes she sparred in, dropping the dress she’d had on at the party to the side. “I was just thinking, it’s too bad Barton couldn’t come. I could really use a sparring buddy.”

“It’s not a good time,” Steve said.

“You think you can take me in a fight, Rogers?” she countered. 

That was a question they had been dancing around figuring out an answer to for the past three years. There was no denying that Natasha had skills that surpassed his own (in many areas) but there was something to be said for the sheer brute strength. “I don’t know, _Romanoff_. I just don’t think now is the right time to find out.”

“It’ll help me sleep,” she said. (What she meant was, it’ll help you sleep. But it was nice of her not to say it outright.) “Get your ass in the ring, Rogers.”

He sighed. (There really was no arguing with her.) “Rules?”

Natasha was stretching while she thought. “No rules.”

That just meant she planned on hitting him as many times as she could. Here he had been thinking it was something like a friendly sparring match. What she’d meant was it was going to escalate from zero to a hundred in three seconds or less. “I’m wearing nice pants,” he said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she promised. Her smile was reassuring in the last second before she moved to attack him. (And even that, in its own way, was a welcome relief.)


	3. Chapter 3

# A Side

The morning brought no relief from the day before. (Could have been, perhaps, that Steve had not slept. He couldn’t be sure anymore but it felt like the idea was that sleep made things better, not the sun rising again.) Staring at the repeating tape of Stark going through the motions of stripping out of his day-time-suit while stopping now and again to talk to himself and drink, getting into sleeping clothes and falling asleep only to jerk awake at 5:09 as a woman had not provided any answers.

There was _nothing_ on the tape, not so much as a glitch in the image to give them any sort of idea what time the Tony’s had been switched. No matter how many times he watched it the details never changed. Everything made sense right up to the moment the wrong Tony woke up. 

Sam brought him coffee, looking like he was still more asleep than awake. It smelled strong and black (with just a hint of sugar) not that it would matter because caffeine, like alcohol, had no effect on him at all. “How’s the arm?” Sam asked. He pulled a second chair up to watch the tape rather than stare pointedly at all the pieces of the splint he’d pulled off in the middle of the night. 

“It’s fine,” Steve answered. He leaned back into the chair with a long sigh. “How’s the,” he motioned at his own neck and Sam reached up to run his fingers across the place the dart had hit.

“Best I’ve slept in years,” Sam said. He sounded _amused_ to have been shot with a sleep dart. Amused to be sitting there watching the screen play forward through the night just _one_ more time. “It’s kind of a relief you know.”

The only thing happening on the screen was Tony sitting on the edge of the bed, fiddling with his phone. There wasn’t anything particularly relieving about that. (Much less so when one considered how much alcohol Tony had consumed and how much lethal machinery he had at his command.) “What?”

“You can get your ass kicked,” Sam said. He was grinning into his coffee cup, looking very pleased with himself as he said it. This wasn’t even the first time Steve had gotten his _ass_ kicked because he had already woken up in a hospital room with this very same man sitting next to him. No, Sam grinned quietly to himself until he knew he was being stared at before he added, “by a _girl_. Gives me hope for the rest of us normal people.”

“Bucky put me in the hospital,” Steve said. “My arm doesn’t even hurt. There’s no comparison.”

“Man,” Sam countered, “you stood there and let her punch you in the face. She’s like this big,” he held up his hand to indicate a height much shorter than Tony actually was. “Like this big around,” was his finger in a slim circle also significantly exaggerated, “That was half the size of Bucky. He had a robotic arm, some superhero serum. She was going to kick your ass with nothing but her fists. There is no comparison.”

“I was _surprised_ ,” Steve said.

“No, I get that.”

Steve was all set to leave the conversation behind, to move on to things that mattered (like where this Tony was from and how to get their Stark back). “I don’t even know what I’m looking at. Nothing happens. He’s gone; she’s there instead.”

“Maybe you didn’t see her move.” Sam shifted in his seat so he could look at the screen more closely, “like how you didn’t see her getting up to punch you. How many concussions have you had? Maybe it’s your age, your vision’s getting bad.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my vision.”

“So, you saw her get up to punch you?”

Yes, he’d seen it. Even if he had been trying to ignore the obvious signs, the animal part of his brain that responded to violence automatically should have made a move to protect itself. No, every little part of him had just stood there with his side smarting from being struck with a chair and let her punch him in the face. “Are you done?” he asked.

Sam shrugged. 

“Because we have a problem,” Steve motioned at the screen, “that deserves at least some of our attention.”

Sam hummed his agreement. “How are we feeling about her? I mean, are we really going to let her have control over,” he motioned his hand over his head to indicate the building, (or just Friday), and the sky and the general idea of all the things Tony Stark owned and controlled. “I’m not sure it’d be a wise idea to _trust_ her.”

“I don’t trust her,” Steve said. Or, at least, he trusted her less than he trusted Stark normally. “I just don’t see how we’re going to stop her. Do you know how to override Stark’s protocols? I don’t even know why Friday listens to her, I don’t even know she can control the suits? She’s not Tony. I mean she is,” because she was, “but she isn’t.”

“And she can kick your ass,” Sam conceded (with his shit-eating grin resting so easily on his face). “But, even as smart as Tony is, there’s got to be someone smarter than him.”

That was doubtful. Stark seemed like exactly the sort of person that would teach himself any field of study just to prove he could. He had a brain like a machine, every part working constantly, turning over every problem he encountered to produce a solution before anyone else had time to think of the problem. (If that wasn’t so infuriating; it might have been more of an asset.) “It’s not just a matter of being smarter than him. We don’t know what else he’s built. What if we go poking around and we find another Ultron?”

Sam nodded. “So, what are our options?”

They did not have option _s_. They had a single _option_ and that was getting this Tony back to her own universe as quickly as possible. In the meantime, it meant continuing as they had done. Tony had already excused himself from the Avengers; she wouldn’t need to do anything but stay in the tower and figure out how to get home. “We help her,” Steve said. “I don’t know how. This,” he motioned at the screen, “isn’t anything I’ve seen before.”

“Too bad we don’t have the lightning god,” Sam said. 

“Or _Bruce_ ,” Steve agreed.

“We know where Jane Foster is, don’t we?” Sam was concentrating on the screen as it sped toward five-oh-nine so that when the man sleeping on the bed jerked upright as a woman, he jumped. “That’s just,” he started, “that’s a damn good magic trick.”

Steve didn’t know exactly where Jane Foster was but he had the resources to find out. It just meant he’d have to call Fury. “I’m going for a run,” he said. He didn’t bother to turn the screen off as the tape reset itself to the night before. 

“You sure?” Sam asked. He was looking at Steve’s arm, “it could be dangerous out there. What if she comes back?”

It was just as easy to walk away from that question as it was to answer it. 

He heard Sam call from inside the room, “make sure you call if you see her shadow!”

Outside, the sun was creeping up away from the horizon, spreading enough light to make a passable imitation of daylight without making anything too warm. It was good weather for running, he stretched (out of practice, not necessity). He meant to run but he found himself standing in the quiet instead, resting his hands on his hips and staring at the streak of dirt his body had tilled up when it hit. 

There was a hole where her fist had gone through, he kicked at the clumps of grass, the bits of dirt to fill it in (just a little) and crouched down to run his fingers along the grainy-damp-earth. (What was it she said yesterday. Nobody here really understand you.) Steve shook his head, like shaking off the doubt and the discontent (and failed). Running wouldn’t change anything but it bought him enough time to try to think of a better solution.

# B Side

Breakfast was a selection of favorites: eggs, sausage, muffins, some sort of fried potatoes and fresh fruit on pretty platters. Tony had followed the smell of it and discovered his not-husband in the kitchen frying eggs with his shirt off. 

“There’s coffee too,” Steve said. It was distracted, half-interested, mostly spoken to the sausage patties still in the pan. “I don’t know if you drink coffee. I just heard it helps with,” and like he didn’t even want to say the dirty word out loud, “hangovers.”

Tony was ambivalent about coffee; it served a purpose and sometimes it was good and sometimes it wasn’t. Still, a steaming mug would be very helpful in washing away the bad taste of last night’s nightmare. (An old favorite featuring an alien planet, a pile of his team mate’s body parts and Steve fucking Rogers gasping, _you didn’t save us_. Wasn’t it funny how it was almost a relief to have a familiar nightmare in the midst of this surrealistic event.) “Now, now Cap,” Tony said. “Just because you can’t enjoy the wonders of alcohol like the rest of us doesn’t mean you have to be jealous.” He poured a cup and picked up the paper off the counter. (It must have been meant for Steve, who seemed like a man concerned with words printed on paper.) 

“Jealous isn’t the word I’d use to describe it,” Steve answered. He dished up breakfast on a nice plate and set it on the table in front of Tony without so much as asking if he wanted it. (The fact that Tony did, and it smelled delicious, not being the important bit.) “Did you sleep well?” was not a question Steve wanted to ask him as he sat in his own seat. His plate was noticeably fuller and when Tony raised an eyebrow, his doting not-husband said, “I have a higher metabolism, I eat a lot.”

“I did not know that,” Tony said.

“Well why would you, we’re not friends,” Steve countered. It was almost as bitter as the coffee, almost in sync with his image of the man. Except for how it was immediately ruined, except for how Steve looked disappointed in himself, “that was uncalled for.”

“I slept,” Tony assured him. Since they were being civil (or trying) he ate his breakfast and read the entertainment section. He was part of the way through a review of a play (he thought it was a play, every other word just seemed to get fuzzy and lose meaning) before he said, “so what’s the plan for today?”

“I’ve got to meet with the others,” Steve said. “We’ve got—” (secret) “business we have to talk about. Pepper will be here after twelve. I’m sure she’ll want to talk about what kind of story we’ll have to use to explain why you’re living here, who you are, where you came from. I think Jane and Erik wanted to meet up with you again, see if you could come up with a plausible theory together.” Every word was metered out exactly; every syllable used precisely. It was the most deliberate monologue Tony had ever listened to. “I’ve got prior obligations that I have to take care of. I might be gone a few days.”

Tony nodded. “Was Iron Man part of those obligations? Am I still Iron _Man_? Iron Woman? Iron Lady?”

“Iron Man,” Steve said. “That’s what the papers were calling her before they found out who she was.” But no mention of whether the other Tony was supposed to go along with the business trip. 

“Are you mad at me about drinking?” Tony asked. It might have been more polite to leave it alone (but when was he ever polite? Really?). “Yesterday was, I felt, the sort of day that deserved a drink.”

“I’m not angry,” was a terrible, obvious lie. “You’re a grown man. You make your own choices.”

“I told Jarvis not to hold it against her,” Tony said. There was no telling how she’d phrased the original command to remind her that she’d quit drinking; so it might not have been of any use to bother with it. (The thought should count, though. That was a phrase, it was the thought that counted.) 

“Thank you,” Steve said. He’d finished eating (which was amazing since Tony had barely managed to nibble a quarter of the way through his own breakfast). Either practice or manners kept him stuck in his seat as he worked through something he was thinking-about-saying. “I should go,” probably wasn’t what he wanted to say. 

“Have a good day, honey,” Tony said.

That made Steve laugh (just once, like a bleat of shock). “She doesn’t call me honey,” he said as he got up. The dishes scraped the table when he picked them up, smiling at the very notion of it.

“Sweetie?” Tony said, “snookums? Sugar? Teddy bear?”

“Sometimes she calls me spangles,” Steve said (still smiling). He tipped his cup up to drink the last of his milk (of course Captain fucking America drank his daily required allotment of milk) before he set the dishes in the sink. 

“Spangles,” Tony repeated.

Steve nodded, one hand on his hip, the other resting on the counter (clearly used to be effortlessly attractive and on display at all times). “There’s an occasional darling. I think she’s mocking me, she says she’s trying to remind me of when I grew up.” (The thing was, if this Tony was anything like him, she was mocking Steve.) Cap blushed over whatever he was thinking, shrugged his shoulders like it didn’t matter. “Most of the time she calls me sexy.”

Tony didn’t mean to laugh but it bubbled right out of his chest, filled up his throat and erupted into the room. Steve was laughing too, caught up in his pink-cheeked embarrassment and fond-memories. 

“I should go,” Steve said when the laughter faded into quiet again. “Pepper will let herself in. Try to think of what you want your story to be?”

Tony nodded. When Steve left, he sat in the kitchen thinking about eating (and failing to follow through) before he refilled his coffee mug and carried it with him down to the lab. Opening the door still felt quite-a-bit like a poking a bruise. Standing just inside the door, concentrating on the smell of the room: clean and metal was still a shade too painful to ignore. But it wasn’t as breathtaking _now_ as it had been the night before. “Jarvis,” he said, “did you finish compiling that data for the twenty eighth?”

“Yes sir.”

“Let’s see it,” Tony said. He sat in the chair. The space in front of him filled up with facts-and-figures and a little video running in the corner that had to have been security feed from the house. It was six playbacks all playing simultaneously, showing everything from the parking lot to the waves in the water. “Pull the same information for the Avengers tower in New York, Jarvis. We’ll need it for comparison.” 

Not that, at present, Tony had any idea of what he was comparing.

# A SIDE

It took Tony two wrong turns before she located the kitchen. (The exhaustion might have been a contributing factor.) She had expected that it would be empty, but all things considered, it wasn’t surprising to find Pepper sitting at the table sipping out of a coffee mug, looking perfectly professional scanning the news on a tablet. 

She must have been shocking to Pepper, what with how she was wearing nothing but the nice white button down she’d picked up off the floor last night. It was long enough to pass for a very immodest (as Steve would say) dress but not nearly long enough to cover the fact Tony still hadn’t found any undergarments. Her hair was doing a credible job of defying gravity, and absent a brush and some hair gel, it was curling into half-hearted swirls everywhere it could. “Morning,” Tony said to Pepper’s aghast expression. 

“Good morning,” was compulsory. “You forgot your pants.”

Tony shrugged and padded toward the fridge. “I can’t imagine it’s the first time.” In her house, it had become almost a customary practice to forget one’s pants in the morning. Steve hadn’t caught on to the nature of the game yet but even if he started the day with pants on, he could generally be talked out of them before breakfast.

This fridge, not her fridge, was full of colorful bottles of perfectly healthy food, prepackaged dishes with labels espousing their all-natural good-for-you qualities. She grabbed the creamer (presumably fat free, perhaps even non-dairy) and slapped the fridge shut. “Am I that health conscious?”

Pepper was half turned in her chair, eyebrows lifted to her hairline, looking completely unimpressed. “No, you aren’t.”

“Thank God,” Tony mumbled. She filled her cup and opened the creamer to sniff it. (It had a bland, milky smell. So unflavored creamer but possibly still with a suitable amount of calories.) “Do we have sugar?”

“In the sugar jar.” (There was something deeply familiar with how fed up with her Pepper was. Something almost funny about it.) “I have a few hours this morning that I can devote to assisting you in finding clothing and getting you set up with authorization to access the system.”

“I have access.” Tony poured as much sugar as could be expected to dissolve into the coffee and sipped it (still a bit too bitter but it wasn’t undrinkable) before opening the cabinets in search of something that didn’t seem like it would be entirely terrible. 

“There are security concerns,” Pepper said.

Tony snorted at that. “Well, if we’re listing our security concerns, let’s talk about why you let a man who clearly has no idea how to lead a team be the leader of a group of super powered vigilantes? Let’s,” she found a box of breakfast cookies that didn’t look terrible and brought the whole thing with her as she went to sit at the table opposite Pepper, “talk about how Steven Grant Rogers, aka Captain America was given an honorary title back when he was a USO performer and his big break as a hero was disobeying direct orders and engaging an enemy he had no knowledge of? That’s what we in the business call dumb luck.”

Pepper sighed. “Nobody questions Steve’s qualifications to run the team.”

“That’s going to get you in trouble,” Tony said. She dunked one of the cookies (possibly blueberry) into the coffee and shoved the whole thing into her mouth. It wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant taste but the coffee did not do the blueberry any favors. “It’s not my business, I get that it’s not my business.” 

“The Avengers have, we _all_ have legitimate concerns. We feel it would be best to limit your access to our files and the Iron Man su—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Tony said. “If Steven wants to take my toys, you can tell him to drive up here like a big boy and tell me himself. You can’t lock me out. I built the system, I know the failsafes and I know who has the override codes. I have no interest in interfering with or antagonizing the Avengers or their missions from this point on. I want to go _home_.” That didn’t mean that she was going to stand by idly, twiddling her thumbs, while they went about the business of slowly stealing this-Tony’s-work. (Because there was nothing in the history she saw, nothing at all, that said they’d ever give it back.) “So, where are we going panty shopping?”

Pepper could not physically have been less amused with her. “I hope you appreciate this is serious.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Tony has worked very hard to reach the point he’s at now. He’s respected in his fields, he’s accomplished, he’s finally,” Pepper said that word with more emphasis than she’d spoken about anything up to that moment, “ready to move on. You may not have asked to be brought here, you may not know why, but if you really are Tony—any version of Tony—you should appreciate that he would like to have his life back how he left it.” She leaned back in her seat, legs crossed, hands in her lap (all the earmarks of a Pepper about to go for a kill). “If we can’t convince you to treat the situation with care, maybe thinking about how your actions effect his life can.”

There were six-or-seven-or-eight objections just to the idea of ‘moving on’ and Pepper’s expectations of what that meant but the general idea of what she said was true enough. Tony was repeating herself (again, again), when she said, “I want to go home. That’s all I care about. That and panties, maybe some pants, a bra wouldn’t hurt.”

Pepper just sighed. “We can’t go until you have pants on.”

“I’ll go get them.”

“Change your shirt,” Pepper said before Tony made it very far. “He has plain black T-shirts, wear one of those. Try not to wear something that looks like you picked it up off his floor.” Because she was his girlfriend, and if she were anything at all like the Pepper of Tony’s world, she had already seen a parade of girls wearing borrowed clothes waltzing out of the house. 

“Sure,” Tony said. “Meet you in the lobby.”

# B SIDE

Tony had offered to build them a proper Avengers base, complete with a glowing sign to announce to the world that Superheros Often Congregated Here but after a three-week argument, the team had decided it simply wasn’t worth the time, money and notoriety. Instead they had an office building on a busy street, the exact sort of eyesore that nobody liked but nobody really paid attention to. There were some modern conveniences, a security system, a nice coffee machine, a fully stock fridge and a basement with enough soundproofing and precautionary equipment to have a reasonable feeling of safety when discussing private matters.

By the time Steve arrived, everyone else was already sitting around the conference table with empty plates and half-full cups, looking as if they had taken the precaution of already having the discussion without him. “Good morning,” he said. 

Nobody seemed to exactly know how to respond to that, even Thor who was very good in awkward situations was glancing sideways at Bruce in a manner that clearly indicated someone would have to respond.

Natasha rolled her eyes, “good morning Steve,” she said. “Tony still not herself?”

“Yes,” Steve pulled out his chair and sat down. It was just as safe to look at the table top as it was to watch everyone react to the news. (Not that ‘maybe you’ll wake up and she’ll be back’ had much chance of happening.) “Is Barton coming?” 

The empty seat to the left of Natasha was obnoxiously quiet (as opposed to when Barton was present, and it alternated between obnoxious quiet and quiet obnoxiousness). She glanced at it, “he was delayed, he’ll be here. We have to move on this, Steve. This is the last Hydra base, this could potentially be the end.”

“I agree,” Thor said. “We must retrieve the scepter before it can do any more harm on this planet. It has powers that are not safe in mortal hands.” 

“As opposed to the immortal hands that used it tear a hole in a sky?” Natasha said. She was grinning at an argument that had been going on for six-or-more-months, ever since they discovered the scepter had been taken by Hydra. Thor crossed his arms over his chest and Natasha just smirked. 

“No,” Bruce interrupted, “we _have_ to. The question isn’t is it necessary but how we plan to do it without Iron Man.”

Steve motioned at Bruce and the much-more-important point that he made. The whole room seemed to settle a good foot lower than it had been a moment before. Thor moved his feet under the table so his boots scraped across the concrete and he found a very fascinating spot on the table to stare at. 

Natasha ran her fingers through her hair to push it away from her face, licking at a split in her lip from the sparring match the night before. “If this Tony can control Jarvis, he should be able to use the suits.”

“No,” Steve said. There was a difference between offering a pair of her pants and offering use of her suits. Tony had spent six years recreating her image from the shadow of an irresponsible arms-dealer (so the papers said) into a respected member of the world, a defender and avenger that protected people who didn’t have the power to do it themselves. Steve wasn’t going to hand her identity over to a stranger from a world full of disasters that drank himself to sleep. “We’re going to have to do this one without Iron Man.”

“What about Rhodey?” Bruce asked. “We’d probably have to get clearance from the government but, they have to want Hydra neutralized as well?”

“The suit’s only half the equation,” Natasha said. “Rhodey’s great, we can use all the fire power we can get but you heard Tony, that base is covered in technology. She couldn’t even tell us what we were up against. It was a dumb idea last week when we had a genius that could problem solve on short notice. It’s a dumber idea now.”

“We’ve been up against worse odds,” Steve countered.

“We have the Hulk,” Thor said. He motioned sideways to Bruce as if the presence of him would negate any need for Tony. (If only it were so easy to brush aside concerns.) “I have not seen any technology that can stand up to the might of the Hulk.”

“Thanks,” Bruce said.

Natasha was giving Thor the stink eye while he looked perfectly innocent. 

“We’re not going to move forward if we don’t all agree,” Steve said. “I understand everyone’s concerns. I have the same ones I just don’t feel comfortable letting someone else join the team when we—we don’t know anything about him. I don’t think she would like that.”

“We have to go,” Bruce repeated. “We’ll figure it out. Like you said, we’ve faced worse odds. I say we call in Rhodey, worst case—Jarvis should be able to communicate real-time information to this Tony. I mean, he has to have the same intelligence she has? He built all this in his world.”

Steve nodded.

“Barton already blocked all the days out on his calendar, he’d say go. I say go.”

“Thor?”

Thor nodded, “we have faced many foes, together and separately. We can manage this one.”

“Are you going to tell him where we’re going? Give him a chance to study the preliminary intelligence we’ve gathered?” The question wasn’t posed to him (so much) as to Thor (who didn’t appear to care) and Bruce (who was reluctant to have an opinion). Natasha was staring at Bruce, almost like she was willing him to say what she wanted him to say. 

“I,” Bruce said, looking sideways at him, “how like Tony is he? If he knows where we’re going, what we’re up against, would he be convinced to sit it out? I’d like our odds better if he had a chance to study the information but how likely is he to not get involved?”

There was no nice way to condense the little bits of information Steve had gotten the day before. It all boiled down to, “I get the impression from him that he’s not used to the Avengers functioning as a real team. He’s—”

“Damaged,” Natasha suggested.

“I think the less he knows, the better it is. I don’t like it,” but Steve didn’t like most things about the situation, not that his wife was in some alternate world with a man who looked like but didn’t sound like he acted like him. Not that this Tony couldn’t sleep without drinking. Not that his team was looking at him with sympathy and concern (for which there was no answer). Steve didn’t like any of it; he didn’t like that it felt _necessary_. “If you think it’s important,” was directed at Natasha, “your head’s clear, mine’s not. I’ll listen.”

“I think,” Thor put in, “he seemed—” (Maybe he’d just remembered there wasn’t an Earth equivalent to what he was going to say, “weary.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. 

“He drank himself to sleep last night,” Steve said.

Natasha sighed. “Then we put the information together, we leave it where he can access it if we need him to. We don’t know what we’re walking into, we don’t know how much of it we can handle even if we have the Hulk. He’s not perfect but he’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.” 

Steve watched Bruce-and-Thor nodding along, and he nodded when he said, “then we do that.” It didn’t feel _right_ but asking for something to feel _right _in this stupid situation was asking too much. “Let’s go over it again, one more time.” He tapped the table top and the holographic map of Sokovia flickered and solidified. “Thor,” he said. Steve sat back and listened, or tried to, and tried not to notice how Natasha was looking at him with such concern.__

# B SIDE

__Tony had not given up. It was just that laying on the ground with his eyes closed, listening to Black Sabbath as loud as he could physically stand it, was an integral part of his thinking process. The trouble wasn’t that he _appeared_ to be doing nothing when Pepper walked in but that there was _literally_ nothing to think about. _ _

__Malibu had been warm and mild the night he arrived. As far back as three weeks there were absolutely no outstanding anomalies (and that, all by itself, seemed like an anomaly). The weather in New York was dissimilar but not out of character for the season. The tower had reported nothing out of ordinary._ _

__Tony had even watched the video of that night (politely skipping the frankly impressive length of time sex occurred) and found that it was unremarkable in every single way. Right up to the moment he woke up, there was no telling that any sort of switch had happened._ _

__In summary, Tony was thinking about what he could possibly be missing while having absolutely no idea what sort of thing he didn’t know. He didn’t hear the tapping on the keypad by the door but he knew _instantly_ it was Pepper because she was the only one whose pin automatically silenced the music. _ _

__“I see you’re working hard,” she said. Her heels made exactly the same noise in this universe as they did in his. In fact, in a world where things were ever so slightly incorrect, Pepper was picture perfect from that sweet-and-deceiving smile on her face to how her skirt fit the curve of her hips._ _

__“It’s part of the process,” Tony assured her. He had one leg crossed over the other, both of his arms folded behind his back, taking in the sight of the lab roof. “Can I help you, Ms. Potts?”_ _

__Pepper flipped open the leather folder she was carrying, looked around for something to sit on and upon finding a rolling chair pushed it over with one hand so she could sit. Once sitting she crossed one leg over the other and pulled a pen out of the folder. “We need to get our story straight, Mr. Stark.”_ _

__“What was the story about where Ms. Stark is?” Tony asked. He sat up so he could see her better (if this Pepper was very much like his Pepper she wouldn’t appreciate his casual half-interest)._ _

__“Not that it is specifically important for you to know,” (it felt like it might have been, if they were going through the trouble of giving him a fake backstory), “but we said that she was sick and couldn’t attend. Of course,” and Pepper glared at him as she said it, “that will just restart the pregnancy rumors we _just_ put an end to.”_ _

__“She’s forty—” (how old was he now? It was his birthday yesterday), “five? That is a bit on the older side to get pregnant, isn’t it?”_ _

__Pepper had the look of a woman who was going to disembowel him with a letter opener. (Hadn’t she said something yesterday, maybe, about having to listen to men tell her how a woman’s body worked.)_ _

__“I’m no expert,” he offered._ _

__“No, you aren’t,” Pepper clicked the pen she was holding and cleared her throat, “for obvious reasons, we cannot claim that you are a missing relative. Ms. Stark was an only child and has no living relatives.”_ _

__“Do I look like her?” It wasn’t that he hadn’t looked at her picture, or stared at his reflection, it wasn’t that he hadn’t devoted half the time he was getting drunk to trying to work out what it was about himself that Steve had recognized. He wasn’t half as pretty as the Tony he was used to (not bad looking, but not pretty either). There was the matter of same-ish hair, and identical eye color but it didn’t seem like it would add up to a sense of instant recognition._ _

__“If you’re insinuating that you could impersonate her, you can’t.”_ _

__“I was _insinuating_ the question of if I looked like her,” Tony countered. (He realized, very early in saying it, that the sentence would be a disaster. So, Pepper’s growing frown was no surprise but the way she almost smiled was.) “Hey,” he said, “you do have a sense of humor.”_ _

__“Not about this,” was pure exasperation. “I don’t know how things are where you’re from but _this_ Tony can’t just _disappear_. There’s speaking engagements, there’s Avengers business, there’s half a dozen appearances she’s supposed to put in _this week_ alone. This may be a vacation from _your_ life but now I have to not only explain where my boss has gone but also why a man has moved into her house.”_ _

__“How could they possibly know a man has moved in—”_ _

__Pepper pulled a folded tabloid out of the leather folder and flipped it open so he could see his frowning face standing not so far from Steve’s shoulder, the pair of them carrying shopping bags and soda cups. The headline was: _Captain Roger’s Secret Gay Affair_. _ _

__It was too ridiculous not to laugh at._ _

__“This is serious, Tony,” Pepper said. There was no aggression or disdain in her voice. It was quiet, pleading. “She’s put up with this,” and Pepper shook the paper, “in one way or another all her life. The media has been dying for a chance to tear apart her marriage.”_ _

__“Couldn’t I be a friend?”_ _

__“A friend?” Pepper repeated. “A friend that nobody has ever seen before that is now living in her home while she is conspicuously absent?”_ _

__“A doctor?” It was a guess; he had no idea what Pepper was hoping to get him to say. (She must have already had an idea, or she wouldn’t be looking at him with such steady, shrewd disappointment.) “Because she is ill?”_ _

__“A doctor that went clothes shopping with her husband?”_ _

__“You tell me,” was easiest._ _

__Except Pepper pulled the tabloid she was still holding out back and folded it precisely down the center. There was contained violence in every motion. When she finished with that she stared down at the paper in her lap with her shoulders living and lowering. “I don’t know. Nothing I’ve thought of seems like it will hold up to scrutiny. I don’t know how long you’ll be here, I don’t know if it’s worth the time and effort to justify anything.”_ _

__“Tell them I’m a doctor, we met at a conference and I’m here to help,” Tony said. “Most of it’s true. I have a doctorate.” Or two. Maybe more. “I’m technically a doctor.”_ _

__Pepper didn’t smile but she stopped frowning at him. “Have you found anything? Anything at all?”_ _

__No. Because there was absolutely nothing to find. Tony couldn’t (didn’t want to) say that out loud so he shook his head. “I just started, sometimes it takes me a few tries to,” he motioned to the side, “get anywhere. I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”_ _

__“Well,” led to nothing. Pepper flipped the leather notebook closed. “I have work to do. I hope this situation,” where he was a man and not the woman she knew, “resolves quickly but if it does not, if you are out in public and you are asked any questions please do not answer. This will be a nightmare to contain without any complications.”_ _

__Tony nodded. “Got it.”_ _

__Pepper nodded and got back to her feet. She was looking down at him, sort of flinching with her eyebrows, like she was working out how to ask something. “We’re dating,” was _dripping_ disapproval, “in your world?”_ _

__“Yeah, sort of.”_ _

__“And you’re Iron Man, you’re still doing all this?” She gestured with a pen around the room at the suits, at the glowing blue holograms displaying every bit of atmospheric data he’d given up staring at._ _

__“I’m sort of retired now,” Tony said. “From the Avengers, not from tinkering.”_ _

__Pepper hummed a suspicious noise and then shook her head. “I’ll let you get back to working.” The music turned back on as soon as she closed the door behind herself._ _

# A SIDE

__Steve had been _attempting_ a nap when Friday interrupted to inform him that Mr. Stark was less than ten minutes from arriving and would like to speak to him. That was enough time to question the intelligence of the artificial intelligence that assisted in running the building and to find a pair of sweats and a T-shirt to put on. It was _plenty_ of time for him to make it outside to stop Tony from getting into the building (or at least try) and that meant more than enough time for Natasha to join him in mid-stride on his journey from his room to the front door. _ _

__“Wanda wants to talk to her,” Natasha said._ _

__“No,” was all reaction, no thought._ _

__“Are you going to be the one that tells her that?” Natasha asked. She was wearing her casual clothes, going for something like non-threatening and barely managing ‘not completely lethal’._ _

__“If I have to,” Steve said. He expected that meant he wouldn’t actually immediately have to but Natasha turned left at an open doorway and Steve went forward toward the door and found Wanda standing just outside of it. (He didn’t sigh.) “Wanda.”_ _

__“I heard what she said.” Of course, she had, the entire team had probably been clustered around the TV screen watching this woman say whatever she wanted about things she couldn’t have understood. “I want—”_ _

__“There’s no point in trying to defend yourself from _Tony_ ,” Steve said. _ _

__Wanda crossed her arms over her chest, tried to look brave (but looked small) as she let out a soft sigh. “I don’t want to defend myself. I want to see her, to see if she is who she says she is,” seemed like the worst idea anyone had come up with thus far._ _

__“I just don’t think that would be a very good idea.” The sound of an approaching car made him glance away, just in time to avoid seeing she frowned at him. He didn’t touch her when he looked back. “Wanda, given what we know about _this_ Tony I don’t think she’d agree to—” whatever one called having their skull opened and the contents of their brain sorted through, “I don’t think seeing what she’s thinking would help. She’s made up her mind about you, about me, about all of us. We need to concentrate on getting her back where she came from and not worry about what she says while she’s here.” When that didn’t make Wanda move he said, “please.”_ _

__She didn’t go willingly (exactly) but reluctantly, and only just in time for the car to pull to a stop a few feet away. The door was kicked open and a woman almost entirely unrecognizable as Tony Stark stepped out. She was smiling, wearing a pretty skirt that almost swished around her legs as she walked and a black shirt with buttons and _make up_. “Steven, I see you still can’t control your own face.” She slammed the door behind her. “I was asked, by Pepper, to look as least like Tony Stark as I possibly could.” That explained everything, right down the shoes. “I think I did okay.”_ _

__“You did more than okay,” Steve agreed, mostly to her bare calves. It was a surreal moment, one that left him trying to remember if he’d ever seen Tony’s bare legs before. He couldn’t remember—maybe an arm, maybe he’d seen him without a shirt, maybe. They didn’t often existing in one another’s space in a way that didn’t require clothing. “Why are you here,” was safer than trying to pinpoint exactly the thing that made this outfit, the skin-tight black shirt—(the breasts)—exactly so un-Tony like._ _

__(It could have been the skirt, it didn’t seem functional, didn’t seem like something you could fight in. Or maybe the heels.)_ _

__“My eyes are up here, Steven,” Tony said. She was smiling that infuriatingly knowing smile. (And it wasn’t even that he was staring at her body with any intent but absolute confusion.) “How’s the arm?”_ _

__Steve lifted his arm, ran his hand across it, “good as new,” he said._ _

__Tony didn’t look even slightly surprised about it. “I guessed it might be.” But that wasn’t nearly as important as, “I came to apologize.”_ _

__“Did you?” Steve asked._ _

__“I was incorrect to attack you,” was, almost, the least believable thing he’d ever heard coming out of a Stark’s mouth. “Twice.”_ _

__Steve crossed his arms over his chest._ _

__Tony put her fists against her hips._ _

__“You know, I’m old fashion but, when someone says they are going to apologize it usually involves an actual apology.”_ _

__Tony’s smile just got that same sharp glint it had the night before not so long before she threw a chair at him. Her hands dropped from her waist, she looked to the side at nothing precisely before brushing a bit of hair off her forehead (that dropped right back into the same place). “Look, we both know I’m not sorry and I make it habit not to apologize for things I’m not sorry about. Even if I was inclined to try, I’ve been told that it comes across as disingenuous and condescending.”_ _

__“As opposed to this,” Steve motioned at the space between them._ _

__“I came to make peace. I don’t like you, that’s fair. You don’t like me. However, apparently, I can’t expect to work in peace because of my actions. I came so you could tell whoever cares,” Tony motioned toward the building and the many teammates that were undoubtedly listening, “that we settled our differences.”_ _

__“Have we?”_ _

__“I didn’t hit you with my car,” Tony said. (Yes, what a relief that was.) “I was shocked yesterday. I woke up in a world that I didn’t understand. I found out I—not me, but this other me—lost things that I never had to lose. I saw friends behave in a way they would never behave. You’ve been betrayed before, Steven. You know how that feels. The thing is, shock fades, priorities change. You aren’t my problem. Getting back to my world that makes sense to me, that’s my priority. So,” she spread her arms, “hit me or yell at me, or whatever you have to do. Then tell all of them,” a hand wave at the compound, “that we’re square.”_ _

__“It would go a long way toward making things square if you’d agree to certain security restrictions.”_ _

__Just for a flash, as quick as the blink of an eye, Steve could see exactly how close she had come to hitting him with a car. It was on her face, in her arms (tensing up at her sides) drowning her whole expression in murder that made the almost-friendly-smile droop at the edges. Quick as it came, it was gone again. “Steven,” she said calmly, “you’ll have to pry his tech, and his systems, and his security clearance at his own fucking building out of my cold dead hands. And I promise you, Steven, you’re not nearly man enough to take me in a fight.”_ _

__“This isn’t personal,” Steve said. Because it wasn’t; it was about protecting what was theirs, about protecting what didn’t belong to this woman. “Those things don’t belong to you, you shouldn’t have unlimited access to them.”_ _

__“They aren’t yours either.”_ _

__Steve clenched his teeth and breathed through his nose. (Thinking, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea just to punch her in the face. It wasn’t a very gentlemanly thought, not something he would entertain seriously, but nonetheless for a few seconds it brought a welcome relief from the red-warm-anger that was spreading out through his whole body.) “You’d let our Tony have complete access to your system? To your suits? To the team?”_ _

__“Yes,” she said._ _

__“Well, I guess you’re more trusting than we are.”_ _

__Tony smiled. “No argument there. Do we have a truce or not?”_ _

__“Are you going to agree to reduced access?”_ _

__“No,” Tony said. Of course, she wasn’t. Of course, she would _not_ even entertain the idea. _ _

__There was no truce, they both knew it, but there were no other options either. Pepper had high level access into Tony’s systems, but even she couldn’t override him. Natasha had enough experience to make an attempt to break into the programming but it had evolved (so she said) since the first time she’d done it and there was no guessing how long it would take. Vision (who wasn’t Jarvis) said it would be functionally impossible to override Tony’s hold on the AI, the suits, the tower and the compound. It would take (according to Vision) a constant coordinated attack on all fronts both from outside and inside the system._ _

__They were missing the manpower, the know-how, and the brute force to manage it. More important than all that was _knowing_ it didn’t matter if they managed it, she would take it back exactly the same way Tony would have. _ _

__Tony knew that, standing there letting the wind blow her skirt against her legs, looking nothing at all like the man she’d replaced. Her lips were a petal-pink in that smile, her whole face a perfect artist rendition of a wealthy, successful woman. It was only her eyes that hadn’t changed, only the way she looked at him that was constant._ _

__Steve said, “I don’t trust you,” because he didn’t, “but I want _our_ Tony back.”_ _

__“I’m sure you do,” she agreed. Then she pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her unruly (curly?) hair and slid them on her face. “Nice talking to you, Steven.”_ _

__He didn’t move, not a muscle, not a breath, until she was at the end of the drive. The fading sound of her wheels was the only noise besides the breeze across the grass. Steve didn’t move, not at all, because it felt like if he even so much as released the breath that was going hot and stale in his chest that he’d start _hitting_ something and he’d never stop. That sort of feeling was dangerous, out of control, as reckless and antagonistic as the smiling (woman) that had just driven away._ _

__He held it, and held it, and held it as long as he could. Just at the point of his lungs screaming for fresh air, he spun around and punched the building. It had been built to withstand far greater attacks, it didn’t give or groan or notice. The skin split across his knuckles and pain radiated straight up to his shoulder from the impact. Even that did _nothing_ to calm the agitation but it gave him something to think about that wasn’t Tony-fucking-Stark._ _

# A SIDE

__Tony had come back to the tower with the intention to dig in and get work done. There was no telling if Steve or Pepper would contact the geniuses that knew more about the theories of interdimensional travel than her. (An astrophysicist would be a blessing now.) Even if they did, having the relevant information already sorted and ready for interpretation would have been _useful_. That was what she’d intended to do, to get down to the business of getting herself home._ _

__She hadn’t intended to be lying flat on her back under a desk with her bare feet pushed against one it’s legs and her skirt in a puddle around her hips as she stared hatefully at nothing. “Fucking Steven God Damn Rogers,” she mumbled to herself. “Friday,” prompted a quick ‘yes, sir’. “I want everything on Rogers, his whole history, all the news reels, all the newspaper articles. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s old files. I want to know everything.” When and how the prick had gotten to _this_ point. How he’d managed to make it so far in this world on nothing but good looks and amazing muscles. _ _

__He didn’t even have a winning smile. He didn’t even have that humble Brooklyn charm._ _

__He was _nothing_ like the man she’d left behind. (And that wasn’t her business. It wasn’t. It wasn’t relevant to her at all.) “Friday,” Tony said again, “don’t, don’t do that—if I ask again, tell me it’s not my business. Tell me I need to go home.”_ _

__“Yes, sir,” Friday said. “I have finished gathering the information you asked for.”_ _

__“Great,” Tony said. “I’ll look at it in a minute.” Just in one more _minute_ , just a few more seconds, just a couple of breaths from now. As soon as she finished reminding herself she wasn’t here to deal with Steven. _ _

__It wasn’t as if she hadn’t _wondered_ what would have happened to that arrogant little shit that had emerged from the ice, furious and without purpose. Maybe she’d had a conversation with the man himself, back in her world where time and effort had tempered all that blind-arrogant-rage into something _focused_ , about what sort of people they’d been if things hadn’t worked out-quite-like-this._ _

__It was a bathtub favorite, while she was soaking off the aches of a battle that had gone right-or-wrong-just-too-long. He was perfection in soapy water, exactly the right temperature, height and softness to recline against with her eyes closed. They were philosophers with steam in the air, his hands mapping new ways to get to familiar destinations all across her bare skin._ _

___Her_ Steve, the _real_ Steve said, _I don’t know. I woke up and I had no direction. I had no purpose. I had nothing. I lost everything: all the people I fought with, the ones I had fought for. It was more than the people, more than the things that I’d lost. It felt like, I lost myself. For the first time in all my life, I didn’t know which way was right, what I should do. The Avengers gave me purpose and perspective. Who knows what I would have been without that.__ _

__Well, _her_ Steve’s nightmares were uselessness and despair, and that just showed a lack of imagination on both their parts because there were tears in her eyes and both her hands in fists, trying to convince herself that it didn’t _matter_ what this other Steve did. _ _

__“Friday,” Tony said as she scrubbed the dampness off her face. “Get me everything on Steve Rogers.”_ _

__“It’s not your business sir, you need to go home.”_ _

__Tony grabbed the desk by the edge and pulled herself up. “I can multitask,” she said. “Get me everything on him. Show me what you have on the twenty-ninth. And get me comparable data on the Malibu house.”_ _

__“The Malibu house, sir?”_ _

__“My house,” Tony said. “In Malibu.”_ _

__“That house was destroyed in an attack by the Mandarin, sir.” Before he could ask a video started playing showing the newsreel footage of helicopters shooting missiles into her house. There was no footage of the interior of the house, no sign of anyone, not _anyone_ coming to help. “Should I gather information on the area surrounding the site, sir?”_ _

__“Yes, do it,” Tony said. She pulled the buttons of her shirt loose, shrugged it over her shoulders and threw it behind her somewhere. The bra wasn’t exactly comfortable but it was a great deal more comfortable than the constricting feel of all the well-tailored darts hugging that stupid shirt to her body. “Alright, show me.”_ _

__The information came in a wave, spreading out across all the available screens and holograms. It was a barrage, a great splatter of numbers, facts and figures. But she’d looked at things that made less sense and reduced them to answers. “I need a pizza,” he said._ _

__“Should I order one?” Friday asked._ _

__“Do it,” Tony said. “Two of them.” Then she got to work._ _

# B SIDE

__Steve hadn’t planned to stop for pizza, it was just that halfway home he had thought to himself (pizza sounds good right now) and he’d made it entirely through driving to Tony’s favorite pizza place, ordering, paying for and receiving the pizzas before he’d even remembered that wherever Tony was, she wasn’t waiting at home._ _

__Still, he carried the pizzas down to the lab and found this other Tony sitting in the old hot rod (also known as a 1932 Ford Flathead Roadster, Steve) watching newsreels about Howard. He turned around when the door opened and looked _guilty_ like a child caught eating stolen cookies. “I was taking a break,” he said. “I’ve been,” he motioned over at the desk and the floating figures hovering above it, “working on theories. Jane and Selvig were here and we—”_ _

__“It’s okay,” Steve said. He was holding three pizzas he’d bought to share with his wife, feeling miserable and guilty because he couldn’t shake the feeling of pity that got caught in his gut every time he looked at this Tony. (Well, pity and aggravation in somewhat equal amounts.) “I don’t know if you like pizza,” he said as he held the boxes up a bit higher._ _

__“I love it,” Tony assured him. He climbed out of the car and took one of the boxes from Steve. He was balancing it on the edge of a table, flipping open the box to make happy little cooing noises at it, and Steve was watching Howard on the screen._ _

__He’d seen most of the news about Howard, he’d watched the man age on grainy film from the young man he’d been when Steve saw him last to this: a man made far, far older by life than he should have been. “Is it different?” he asked, “I mean, your parents? Where and how you grew up?”_ _

__“I wasn’t a girl,” Tony said. He lifted a slice and held it with the very tips of his fingers like it was too hot (not that such a thing as minor burns had ever stopped anyone from eating a pizza) and watched Howard on the screen, “no. Not different enough to matter. It’s interesting how much the same it is—I mean, I thought for sure, no Maxim models? I was wrong. I thought good old Dad wouldn’t have sent a daughter to boarding school. I was wrong.” There was bitterness in the statement that echoed his Tony’s exactly. “No, everything is the same until the news conference where we tell the world we’re Iron Man. I can’t be sure exactly, but I know how my life went and I see how hers,” he gestured, “is. There’s some big differences.”_ _

__Steve sighed. “I’m going to be out of town for a few days.”_ _

__“I worked that one out,” Tony said. “Whatever it is, you’re going to be careful? Get home safe? All that, whatever spouses say. Be careful? Have fun?”_ _

__“Sounds right.” Steve nodded (felt that guilt, thick and leaden, taking up space in his gut). “We usually eat this on the roof.” It was and wasn’t an offer, maybe just a statement. Tony didn’t look like he was sure what it was either. “If you wanted to, the sun’s going to set. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”_ _

__“Sounds perfect,” Tony said. “I need a break.” He dropped the pizza slice back into the box and flipped it closed. “Lead the way.”_ _


	4. Chapter 4

# B Side

Mornings had developed a certain kind of rhythm: a predictable flow of noise, and motion, and temperature. Mornings were warm and quiet before dawn, full of sleeping noises: hums and breath and a bit of snoring now and again. It was the perfect weight of the blanket laying over his body, the slow fade black-to-gray of the light through the windows. Until Tony woke up without warning, always abruptly jumping from greedily snuggled in blankets to kicking and elbowing as she stretched.

Mornings started, properly, with Tony twisting around under her blanket, with her hand sneaking under his to slide up his arm as she leaned against his body. Just before her head filled up with thoughts-and-obligations, there was a moment that belonged only to him. That sleepy smile on her face as she looked at him like seeing him for the first time in months (instead of hours). 

Mornings were Tony in the shower mumbling over things she had-to-do and things she’d-just-thought-up. Jarvis was her bathroom companion, obediently recording her every brilliant idea (even the dumb ones). Steve scrubbed his face and considered a shave, he went for a run (because showers had a way of taking forever) and came back sticky-with-sweat. Tony was in her lab and he was in the shower.

Mornings came together in the kitchen. Half the time Tony sat on the counter eating whatever required no cooking, picking apart bagels and drinking something with more sugar than nutrition, while she asked him questions about his intentions for the day or read him the news. Half the time it was Tony wearing nothing but one of his shirts. Those mornings took longer than most. 

The thing was, mornings weren’t like this. They were a quiet room he shared with his wife, absent the warmth of her body at his side. It wasn’t the guilt that settled like a brick in his gut, that grew spider legs through his body. All his veins were filled up with it, swishing and swilling around with every beat of his heart, until all he could think was some cross between:

He wanted her back, right here, right _now_. (And.) They’d made the right choice; the good choice; the best choice based on what they knew. 

Tony (his Tony, the real Tony, the Tony who should have been tiptoeing her fingertips up his arm this very minute) would _understand_ that it was what was _best_ and she wouldn’t have liked it the way he didn’t _like_ it but there were more important things to consider than how it _felt_. 

(But maybe she wouldn’t have; maybe she would have been that little voice in the very back of his head whispering things like: if you thought it was me, thought it was _Tony_ , if you looked at him and you saw _me_ in every way that mattered, how dare you. How dare you treat him like this.)

“Fuck.” Steve kicked the blankets off. (They weren’t keeping him warm anyway.) The sky was still black as coffee, spilled all across the room. There was no hope but a fool’s hope, and fool’s hope was all he had as he went down the hall and opened the guest room door. Those last, perfect seconds before the door opened, he thought _it could be her, she could be back, she could be laughing in a minute, telling him about the stupid place she’d gone and how she’d gotten back_ , but it was only Tony-the-man, sleeping gut-side-down on the bed.

Of course, of course it was still Tony-the-man. 

Steve pulled the door closed and stood in the hallway, feeling foolish (and disappointed, and unsure). There were things to do (a shower, packing a change of clothes, breakfast maybe) but he couldn’t force any part of his body to move away from the door, to drop his hand off the doorknob. He stared at his left hand spread across the knob, at the ring on his finger, thought of _her_. 

( _Don’t be so selfish_ , she’d tell him.)

There he was nodding along to the voice in his head. “Jarvis,” he said as he went down the hall. “Make sure he’s awake and in the lab by 4.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hopefully we won’t need him.” But hope, Steve had found, wasn’t as reliable as it used to be. “I just want to have him there if we do.”

Mornings weren’t like this (anymore): filled up with silence and solitude. They weren’t quick bowls of cereal in a lonely kitchen, staring at the tourist magnets on the fridge (thinking how the first one had been a joke and the second one a callback but it had become a _thing_ and now they had magnets stuck to everything). Mornings weren’t leaving alone, carrying his bag in one fist and his shield in the other, lingering at the open door (feeling like, he’d forgotten something). 

Pepper was on her way in while he was on his way out, she smiled at him (hopelessly, exactly how he felt). “No change?” she asked.

“No change.”

“You’re going to be safe?” Pepper asked. It wasn’t anything she usually asked. It served her better to put her energy into managing the business and Tony’s life spent far removed from the world of super villains and crime fighting. She didn’t get caught up in terrorists and supernatural weapons from space. They existed and she knew of them; it was just that they’d struck up an unspoken agreement that Pepper would keep home neat and tidy and always waiting and Steve would watch Tony’s back out in the violence of the world. “She’d want you to be safe.”

“I plan to do the best I can,” Steve agreed. 

Pepper smiled and motioned at the door, “I should head in. I’ve got to finalize the press releases.”

Steve nodded, “of course.” He reached the end of the drive as Natasha pulled up. She was drinking coffee, wearing her day-off clothes (because who really wanted to wear their suits when they didn’t have to), glancing past him at the empty space where Tony usually-was. 

“I guess you get to ride in the front this time,” she said.

That was a privilege he didn’t often earn. “I guess I do,” he agreed. “Is Rhodes coming?”

“He’s going to meet us halfway,” she said. She sipped her coffee while he got in and buckled his seat belt. Just before she set the cup down, she said, “are we sure about this? One hundred percent sure?”

No. “We agreed,” he said.

But Natasha knew him; she sighed and didn’t argue.

# A Side

Tony was a proper bottle of liquor and a cigarette short of the desired aesthetic. It was long after midnight, nowhere near dawn. She’d driven for (what felt like, could have been, might not have) been hours to find anywhere the stars were visible beyond the noisy light pollution. Out here, parked in front of an ailing convenience store at the side of a winding road, the stars were grinning from the big-damn-sky. 

Out here, her fingers were cool and slippery on the neck of a glass soda bottle, working off muscle memory of a time not so long removed when all her glass bottles were alcohol. (God how good would that have been, the perfect antidote to the hollow thing yawning in the center of her whole god damn body. But promises were promises were promises regardless of how far removed from the source she’d gotten.) Her feet were resting on the bumper, her legs spread around the license plate, she was leaning forward (not back), staring at the cracks in the pavement with the ghost light of her phone illuminating her shoes. 

There was nothing but space around her, a whole wide-open-world with fuzzy, unclear edges. She meant to escape the crowded feeling of walls all around her, the oppressive glow of screens (full of facts, figures, and fuck yous, really). There just wasn’t (and she knew this, she knew it better than most) any escaping the traps you carried in your head. There were no walls and no screens and still she could feel the world shrinking down around her. 

It was coming-for-her-sure-as _anything_. Walls or no walls, it didn’t matter, because things like space and time and reality didn’t have to hold true in this brave new world. Tony had slipped through a hole she couldn’t find and woken up in a place just similar enough it wasn’t unrecognizable. 

Oh-but-how-much better it would have been to wake up somewhere _else_ ; to come to in a world on fire. Anything, anything but this slow turning hell. 

“Friday,” Tony said. The phone perked up in her lax grip. She leaned back, used her elbows and her heels until her back was against the windshield. The phone laid against her chest as she stared up at the stars. “Anything?”

“No change, sir,” Friday said.

No change. No change at all. Tony wasn’t an optimist and she knew it because Steve was an optimist. That man could pull on his blue spandex suit and spout bullshit that would make even the most nonviolent person want to punch a man in the nuts. Tony liked to argue there wasn’t always room for hope and there wasn’t always room for best-case-scenarios because the real world was a mess of rough edges and awkward bits. But Steve could bend _reality_ in his hands, wringing hope out of despair.

Hope had never done Tony any fucking good. Hope hadn’t saved her from her Father’s indifference. It hadn’t spared her the phone call to inform her that her Mother had died. Hope hadn’t kept Obidiah from having her kidnapped, hadn’t kept the smiling terrorists from torturing her. Hope hadn’t saved Yinsen, it hadn’t saved _her_. 

Hope hadn’t stopped the rumors. Hope hadn’t saved her company when the men on the TV spit their bullshit all over her reputation. 

But there she was, laying on a fucking nice car, looking up at the stars filling her head up with _hope_ that there was a Tony on the other side of this joke, surrounded by people motivated to get her back. That _her_ Steve was wringing hope out of her despair, even when he couldn’t see her, believing without a moment’s pause that there was-a-way. 

“Friday,” Tony said. Her voice was raw-and-wet, all hot when she tried to talk. There were tears in her eyes (and why not, why not here where there was nobody to see. Why not when she’d filled her head up with footage of her _life_ falling apart one fucking piece at a time). “Where were we?”

“2009, sir.”

“Right,” Tony said. “I won the Apogee award.”

“Yes, sir.” Friday was good at shaving off the details that didn’t matter. It was better with bare facts. She recounted Tony’s history with precision. The farther back it went, the more it sounded just-like-hers. 

Child genius, distant father, doting Mother, string of public affairs. War monger, merchant of death, _Da Vinci of our Time_. (Betrayed.) It all lined up, synonymous details filing into place right up to the moment they’d stood in front of the press conference with Pepper’s expectation of providing a detailed lie and the giddy truth just behind their perfect-white-teeth. 

It changed there. His life went left and hers went right but here they were, taking up each other’s space. At least, they were operating under the assumption that they had simply been swapped. That she was where he had been and he was where she had been. There could have been an infinity of universes, an unknown number of swaps that happened when the cosmic force in charge of fucking over Starks of all types had struck upon this brilliant idea.

“Friday,” Tony said to the drone of minute details about the effect of Tony putting an end to weapons manufacturing had on the company stock. There would never be another time in her life she needed someone to explain to her what she’d done to the company stock. In her world, they called her unstable. They laughed at her on public TV. They told acidic jokes about _that time of the month_ and puked up their vile, outdated ideas of how women-shouldn’t-make-choices. They’d hailed Obidiah as a savior when he stepped in to steal her company (and they’d reported his unfortunate death with regret, never knowing the treason S.H.I.E.L.D. burned with his body). There was no uterus to take the blame for Tony Stark in this world, no menstruation to scapegoat for his behavior. “You can stop.”

“Yes, sir,” Friday said. 

With her eyes closed, and the bottle resting on her thigh, she thought of Howard. Of his stupid face watching her from an old strip of film, his post-humous congratulations and compliments. When she was on the verge of death, it had been a blessing. It had felt like proof that the love she’d spent half her life searching for had been buried under the surface of his skin all that time. But it hadn’t been love, not the kind that mattered, not _when_ it mattered. It was Howard on the film, chasing her away, telling her that girls belonged with their Mothers. It was him in a room, staring at camera, knowing he was never-ever-not-ever going to change. Maybe he believed in her, the way he believed in the potential of all his creations. But belief wasn’t love and one did not require the other.

Howard pissed her off, he filled her from top to toes with anger. Anger was better than _this_ , discontent and despair. Anger was fire, was creation, was change, was _staying alive_. 

So, she laid under the stars and she thought of Howard.

# A Side

“Are we going to talk about it?” Natasha asked him between two and three in the morning, long after the others had given up pretenses and worried glances in his direction. One after the other they’d all stopped by to see him, to glance at his bruised knuckles with varying levels of concern, before they moved on to other things.

Sam had come to chat about beer, and memories, and baseball games. (As far as Steve could tell, Sam did not know much about baseball but it was nice of him to try.) 

Vision had come to check on his arm (and his mental state, but quietly). They had talked about the plan for the next day, if the training exercises would resume and what they would entail and what Vision should do with all the time he didn’t sleep.

Rhodey had stopped after midnight to look at him with concern, to bother enough to say, “we all know how Tony is. He can overreact. We just need to focus on getting him back.” It wasn’t a very moving plea for mercy from the man that was Tony’s best (only?) friend. 

It had only been Wanda that hovered outside the room and left again without saying anything. He didn’t blame her; she was only a kid in a strange place, attempting to cope with the things she’d lost. 

“Which thing,” Steve asked. He had spent part of the night trying to concentrate on training exercises (and failing, again, and rewatching the interrogation video, again). He’d made the attempt to sleep and when that had left him with nothing but bedhead, he had come here, to the gym.

Stark had lingered between amusement, annoyance and respect for how many punching bags Steve could kill in a single night of effort. He had been working on making them less destructible ever since the battle in New York, in between other projects, giving Steve new versions to bang his fists against. The ones filling up a closet in the compound were the newest attempt, a better material and a better filling that was meant to withstand more force. It was nice, to have something that could stand up to his strength and it was _annoying_ all at the same time.

Natasha was eating dry cereal out of a cup, wearing the clothes she slept in (which weren’t exactly pajamas) eying the bag creaking as he hit it (again). “I don’t know,” she said, “seems like there’s something you’d want to talk about.”

“No.” There was absolutely nothing he wanted to talk about. Not about this Imposter-Tony (who wasn’t an imposter, who was the real thing, just not their real thing) and how she looked at him with pity and fury. 

He didn’t want to talk about how quickly, how easily, how effectively she dug in under his skin. At the dozen things she’d already said to him that he couldn’t get out of his head. They were swimming in the span of space between his ears. _Do you still believe in God, Steven_? 

Nobody called him Steven, nobody but Erskine ever had. He couldn’t even have sworn that he didn’t want to be called Steven, that it bothered him, that he didn’t like it until he had to listen to it on repeat, dripping with sarcasm and mock respect. (But do you _still_ believe in God? Do you _still_.) It was the details that bothered him, the little things that he couldn’t dig out from under his skin.

Tony said: Howard _and_ Maria Stark were killed but she said _he was your friend_ because she knew (and well everyone should have known) that Steve had met Howard who took a chance on a dumbass kid with broad shoulders and a toy shield. Howard _had_ been his friend, but Steve hadn’t met Maria but seen her picture in all the years since. He didn’t _think_ about what the Winter Soldier did because it had been Hydra that did it. That broke down real easy when the blame was moved right across the line to Hydra and it left Bucky with fresh clean hands. 

(Hands, Steve knew, that had killed Howard and his wife. But Howard was a _friend_ but he wasn’t _Bucky_ and Tony knew _it_ , sitting across the table from him.)

“Nothing?” Natasha prompted. She was trying to look casual while watching the chain holding the punching bag creak. There were stress marks where he’d been beating it (relentlessly). His hands felt bruised, his arms were hot from effort, his whole body was coated in sweat. “So, they can’t be the same person right?”

“What?” Steve asked.

“Tony and girl Tony. Friday can’t tell that she’s not him? How does Friday know to respond to Tony’s voice commands? How does it know where she is? How does it recognize her? How do the suits work?”

Steve pulled his shirt up far enough to wipe his face on it (which did nothing but swish sweat around). He shrugged his shoulders, “does it matter?”

“To the ones of us that don’t instantly recognize Tony when he’s switched sexes, yes.” Natasha stuck a piece of cereal in her mouth as she smiled at him. (And that was a tease too, something she wanted him to ask her to explain.) 

It wasn’t a matter of proof but a feeling. He knew it was Tony. It didn’t matter so much how he knew it or why he knew it but that he did _know_ it. Steve licked his lips while he tried to think of how to respond. “It’s Tony. You’ve seen the tape. He goes to sleep, she wakes up.”

Natasha didn’t sigh at him. “Does our Tony know about his parents?”

Steve looked at his hands, at the gummy tape around his fists, gone all gray with use. He flexed his fingers and closed his eyes (just for a second, just long enough to let that bit of regret work its way deeper). “I don’t know how to tell him? What good does it do?”

“Things like that always come out, Steve. You really want to wait until the next Loki tells him? Tony deserves to know what happened to his parents.” But just as easily she was shaking her head. “What are you going to do about girl Tony?”

“What can I do?” That’s what it came to. What could he do? He’d entertained a notion of locking her in a concrete room. It was three square meals and plenty of time to reflect on how she got here and how she could get back. He was willing to give her some chalk and a blanket. (But that’s all it was, just an idea, because Tony was annoying but she wasn’t an enemy and you didn’t go around putting your allies and sort of friends in jail cells just for refusing to listen.) “I think she’s made it clear she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Natasha hadn’t looked that unimpressed with him since she caught him lying about Fury in a hospital hallway. “Steve,” was very, terribly, _awfully_ patient. “The only thing we _do_ know about this Tony? Is that she is _definitely_ wants something to do with you.”

(She wanted to piss him off, for instance.) “What would you do?”

“If we can’t _force_ her to do what we want, we have to make her want the same thing we want.” Which sounded perfectly logical for a spy and a master of manipulation. Natasha made it obvious and easy: they would simply have to make Tony do what they wanted.

(Only Steve had been consistently failing to get Tony’s cooperation for the past three years.) “And how should I do that? Stand there while she throws things at me?”

“Well, it worked with Ultron.” Natasha was smiling when she said it, but it didn’t last very long. “I don’t know, maybe Rhodey should talk to her? From what I heard, she seemed to recognize him as a friend and she surrendered to him.”

“He had a lot of guns pointed at her.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Rhodey’s been Tony’s friend longer than we have. If anyone can tell us something useful about whether she’s a threat, it’ll be him.” She motioned at his whole body, “take a shower, you smell like a rotting moose.” She walked away before he could think up a comeback (or a better idea than sending Rhodey to reconnaissance work).

# B Side

It was always the same. ( _You did this. You didn’t protect us._ ) The clammy panic that followed him out of sleep, his own hands grabbing his arms where Steve’s dead-hands-had-been. “Jarvis,” was _compulsive_ , searching for something familiar and real in the storm of rapid-heart-beats and not-quite-breathing. 

“Sir.”

Tony collapsed back into the pillows, eyes closed and hands covering his face. The t-shirt he had slept it was damp with sweat, stuck to his shoulders and his chest. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe, with both hands pushed flat against his face and no room to get air in or out.

Funny how a few seconds felt like a few years under the right conditions. Tony kicked the blankets off and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows-on-knees, staring at his bare toes. “Whose here, Jarvis?”

“Ms. Potts is in the living room, sir.”

That wasn’t so bad. Tony washed his face and thought about putting a comb to use. In the end he dressed for a day in the lab and went down to the kitchen to find something that required minimal effort to eat for breakfast. While he was debating the merits of frying sausage and eggs versus the quick and effective cold cereal option, Pepper came into the kitchen to refill her drink. 

“Good morning,” she said. 

“Good morning, Ms. Potts.” Sausage and eggs just seemed _better_ and there was no reason not to take the time to make them. He had no obligation other than reviewing the same information he had the day before, other than looking over whatever theories the others might have sent to him. Making breakfast was a _perfect_ distraction; there was no time to worry about dead bodies and swapped worlds while he was frying sausage. 

Pepper was still there when he’d finished piling the necessities on the countertop. She had one hand on her hip and the other resting on the counter closest to the door, her fingers were drumming but poised to start at any moment. “You cook?” she said.

“Infrequently.” He located the pan he wanted (and would you look at that, a whole different universe and the same taste in underused cookware). “Does she not cook?”

“Steve and she claims that she cooks but I’ve never seen it,” Pepper said. “You and I are dating,” she repeated with the same suspension of disbelief she had used the day before when he’d told her. Tony nodded because there was only so many times a man could say the same thing before insanity set in. “Did we start dating before you were Iron Man?”

“Uh,” he had forgotten to retrieve butter, and a bowl and a whisk. He laid the sausage in the pan and rinsed his hands at the sink. “No.”

“You were _actively_ Iron Man when I started dating you?” She couldn’t possibly have conveyed less belief. Between her face and her voice, there was no room for misunderstanding how outrageous she found that claim to be. “I could maybe,” was just to further drive the point home, “understand why I _might_ be convinced to date you _before_ you were Iron Man, but after?”

What a strange feeling this was, the feeling like he _should_ protest and defend himself and thinking he’d always been kind of confused about how it had happened himself. “She’s not a fan of Iron Man all the time,” Tony conceded. (Like when the suit had attacked her. Like when he had almost died. Like when he created a murder bot that nearly destroyed the planet.) “I don’t always make things easy.”

This Pepper cracked a smile at that, almost laughed, “no,” was completely agreement, “you don’t.” But her face softened, “I do love her. I understand that. But I wouldn’t date her, I couldn’t imagine it. Of course, I’m not a lesbian or bisexual so that might make a difference. Are we happy together? Do we take care of one another?”

(No so much; not anymore.) “We’re,” Tony held the whisk he’d pulled out of the drawer in one hand and motioned sideways with it, searching through every word he knew for one that made sense. One that didn’t make him seem _ungrateful_ that wouldn’t hurt his Pepper’s feelings. “Comfortable? It works.” He didn’t want to think too much about the look of pain on this Pepper’s face so he pulled the eggs over to start cracking them into the bowl. “What about her and Steve? Are they happy?”

“Yes,” left no room for doubt. 

“Where is Steve? Avengers business?”

Pepper straightened up, she licked her lips and picked her cup up off the counter. It was all the earmarks of a strategic retreat. “I don’t involve myself in Avengers business. I manage the half of your life that doesn’t involve putting on a metal suit and getting shot at. That’s how we’ve maintained our working relationship.” She nodded at the pan, “you should turn those before they burn.” Then she left.

# A Side

The only pro to paranoia was the toys. This Tony had thought up thing that she might not have thought up in her entire lifetime. He had suits for everything from arctic exploring to holding up buildings. (Although, realistically, she couldn’t think up a reason she might need to shore up a collapsing structure on the average outing.) His AIs (so many of them) had reached a point of refinement that only repeated attempts could manage. 

She was sitting in his bed with her cheek resting on her upturned knee with a spread of tablets laid out on the covers, wearing a long T-shirt like a nightgown, flicking through the blueprints of other Tony’s fucking _impressive_ armory. (Or at least, it had been impressive, once upon a time. Now it was a catalogue of past ideas with little red dots by their name, indicating they had come-and-gone.) “What the fuck happened to you?” she mumbled into her knee. 

Because _she_ had imagination that never failed to raise to a challenge; and she’d sat created things that seemed fantastic and unnecessary in her world. Everything from portable suits (shaped like suitcases) to the Hulkbusting Armor (also called Veronica). She’d made the Mark VII to see if she could, and it was useful to have armor that could fly to her. But it hadn’t become _this_ , this madness that filled up portfolios of now-destroyed (terminated, purposefully destroyed suits). If she tapped on the notes she could see where he came back to make little adjustments here and there to improve performance because even after he’d blown them up (for whatever reason) he still had convinced himself he didn’t need them.

It wasn’t just suits, (though the sheer number of those was staggering), but _vehicles_ and watches that became gauntlets. It was dozens of improved versions of the arc reactor. It was lists and lists and lists of proposed weapons that could be added. The documentation of tests for different materials that had been tested to improve the effectiveness of the suit. (And not just his but _everyone_ ’s.) 

There were designs for the War Machine (that hadn’t evolved very much past its original design save for an occasional paint job and some tune up work) that she couldn’t have thought up in a hundred years. 

When she-and-Steve weren’t exactly dating but didn’t precisely hate one another anymore, she had taken up the challenge of trying to make a better shield than her Father had. It was an impossible goal because Steve’s dedication to his fucking shield was only outweighed by how simple and _useful_ it was. While this Tony was descending into panic-driven-productivity, she had been testing the durability of baseballs because maybe-once Steve had mentioned how he had always wanted to play but he kept destroying the balls. (Just as soon as she stopped laughing about the phrase ‘I keep destroying my balls’.) Or losing them, assuming they survived the initial impact. It was hard to find someone to play with him because most humans were made of human things and the ones that weren’t, like Thor, didn’t understand the rules.

This-other-Tony was building fail-safes and house-party-protocols, filling Jarvis up to the gills with medical text books while she was perfecting a baseball mitt that would keep Steve-Rogers-propelled-baseballs from breaking her hand. She built a baseball diamond, other Tony filled a basement with sentries. He built the technology to remotely control his suits, he’d implanted trackers under his skin. 

(And where, she would have screamed if she had the energy, were the people that liked to call themselves his _friends_ and _girlfriend_ while he was slipping deeper and deeper into this pit of terror?)

“Friday,” she said. She was _exhausted_ , surrounded by the evidence of failure, but she couldn’t _sleep_. “Show me the Mark VII footage from New York, 2012.” She leaned back against the headboard, dragged one of the tablets with her (thinking if she just kept swiping, she’d eventually reach the end). The TV screen across from the bed flickered on to the sounds of screams. 

And Loki.

And aliens.

And a big, cold black hole in the sky. The video went dark and it never came back.

# B Side

“Hey man,” Clint had said when they all boarded the jet. “I’m sorry about—” (that was the moment Barton grasped for tact while Natasha undoubtedly shook her head just behind Steve’s shoulder), “—your wife. Tony’s a man now? That’s weird.”

“Thanks Clint,” was just about the only thing he could think up to say in response to that.

“We’re sure,” Clint added. It was a gentle tone, inviting confidence in the narrow space between them as Thor and Bruce went around them to find their seats. “That it’s really Tony? We’re one hundred percent sure?”

“We’re sure,” was a far simpler answer than trying to explain that there was no way to be one hundred percent sure. There was no way to prove this Tony was their Tony. Even if they broke it down to DNA tests and personal history there would be no proof in the results. This Tony _was_ Tony and all they had to prove it was a video of the man waking up in Steve’s bed and the feeling in his gut when he looked at him, the one he couldn’t deny, the one that said: yes, this is Tony. “Are we ready here?” 

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. He smiled and patted Steve on the shoulder, “we’ll figure it out. Right after we take care of this Hydra base thing.” 

Most of the flight was quiet. Bruce listened to music and read articles on a tablet. Natasha alternated between snacking, keeping Clint company and napping. Thor kept up no pretense of anxiety or restlessness. When he wasn’t sleeping, he practiced flipping and catching his hammer. 

It was the most disjointed they’d been since the first stumbling mission after New York, back when they were more strangers than partners. When they were making assumptions about each other’s abilities, learning the limitations of their unique strengths. Not all quiet was bad quiet, but the sort that festered uneasiness was never the right sort. 

Steve had a pencil and a sketchbook; he maybe thought he’d draw his wife. His hands got away from him, his mind wandered into gray mush (throwing out maybes and what ifs, leaving him feeling filled bottom to top with prickly things). When the plane shuddered and Natasha turned to shout, _we got incoming_ back at them, Steve looked down at the sketchpad on his lap to find Bucky’s half-drawn face staring back at him. He slapped the cover closed and pushed it to the side.

Rhodey stepped out of the War Machine suit with a smile, “thanks for the ride.” (Thor laughed, with good humor, as he usually did.) Bruce smiled back and Clint called from the pilot’s seat, “no problem man.” But Rhodey was already on his way to sit next to Steve, not even bothering with the pretense of extended pleasantries. He slid into the seat to Steve’s left and started with an immediate, “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the party, there was—” (A national emergency, an incident, a need in another part of the world. It was hard to blame Rhodey for failing to show up when the woman they were all celebrating hadn’t even bothered.) “So, _what_ happened?”

“Tony went to sleep next to me,” Steve repeated (again), “a different Tony woke up.”

“It’s definitely Tony?”

Steve nodded.

Rhodey leaned back in his seat and ran his hands down his thighs before he just shook his head. “Do we have people on this? Does he know how he got here? Do we have ideas?”

“Tony’s working on it. Jane Foster and Erik Selvig are helping. Thor said it’s possible for there to be passages between realms that are imperceptible to the eye and undetectable by,” and Steve lifted his hands to put air quotes on the word, “science.”

Rhodey glanced at Thor who had gotten up in search of something to snack on. As uncomfortable as the quiet inside the jet had gotten, it wouldn’t surprise him if Thor excused himself from the burden of flying inside of something and simply took off to meet them there. “No ideas yet?”

“It’s only been one day.” (If he thought that was far too long to have to wait for his wife, he tried not to let it show.) 

Rhodey nodded, slow and even. “Do you want me to, I don’t think I could _help_ but, I don’t know, visit? Wherever he’s from, are we,” Rhodey motioned at the whole interior of the jet, “all there?”

“We’re there,” Steve agreed, “we just aren’t the same people. We’re the people that let his house get blown up by helicopters, the ones that didn’t show up when he was presumed dead. He built a robot, I think, that tried to destroy the planet. Him and I, the other me, we don’t,” he air quoted the words, “get along.”

“Shit,” Rhodey mumbled to himself. “We’re assuming that she’s where he was?”

“We assume.”

“Cap,” was very friendly sounding, “I don’t think she’d take it very well, waking up in that situation.” That was an understatement; a massive, incredible, drastic understatement. “The Malibu house?”

Steve nodded.

“She loves that house,” Rhodey said like it needed to be pointed.

“Jarvis is dead too.”

Rhodey whistled. “Shit,” was repeated with more emphasis. “She’s not making friends there, is she?” He meant it in a humorous way; the way he often meant things to be. It was almost _funny_ , the thought of how angry Tony would be to wake up in the clusterfuck that this Tony described. (And ‘angry’ might have been an understatement all on its own. Things like this, they had the stored energy of an atomic bomb. Things like this drove Tony to a point of anger that would have made the Hulk worry.) “She’ll find a way back,” Rhodey said. 

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. They smiled together, reassuringly. “We should go over the plan. We didn’t tell Tony where we were going—but we did leave the information with him if we need his help. Thor,” he called. “Bring Rhodey up to speed on the plan?”

# A Side

Steve showered because there was no sense in attempting to sleep. Every time he laid down, his head filled up with noise. It was like an old radio just out of tune, playing static over words, and no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on one thing he couldn’t stop hearing all of it. 

There were worse things in the world than another version of Tony Stark. No matter how many times he repeated it to himself it didn’t shake the anger that was burning in the pit of his stomach; how they had come here only three days ago with the intention of building a team. How nobody could derail a simple plan like Tony fucking Stark could. Steve hadn’t so much as managed a full day of routine and it had already fallen apart.

It _wasn’t_ Tony’s fault (this time) but it didn’t matter as much where the fault lay as how he had to rearrange his plans to accommodate the minor emergency of having a former team member (a super genius, with unlimited resources, unlimited imagination and access to unknown amounts of lethal weaponry) abruptly replaced with a different version of themselves. To ignore that would undoubtedly end with another world crisis. 

So was delegating duties in his head. Vision was intelligent and not-quite-human. He had the ability to assimilate new information quickly and it seemed like he’d be relatively good at researching any sort of similar occurrences. Natasha was useful for managing assets and navigating tricky situations, she was best suited for keeping an eye on Tony and steering her away from unacceptable behaviors (like showing up in full armor to break friends’ arms). Rhodey was ideal for attempting to figure out where this new Tony’s loyalties lay. (Unless it turned out that Rhodey and other Tony were not friends in their universe.) Sam could set up and maintain surveillance in case Tony decided to show up to fight again.

That left only Wanda. 

Wanda who was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of something hot, looking unhappily at the TV playing muted news coverage of the clean-up in Sokovia. Steve tried not to watch it; tried not to listen to all the men in suits with titles that showed up after the fact to say what would have worked better. (Tony not building Ultron would have worked better; but sometimes you had to accept what you were given.) There were scientists, politicians and humanitarians all over the news crying over devastation (and there was devastation, which was terrible but still far better than global annihilation). 

No good came of watching the commentators who hadn’t ever stood on the edge of a city being lifted out of the ground criticize choices they would never have to make. No good came of listening to the ones that defended them, that said the Avengers were heroes. 

(They weren’t heroes, not this time, just a bunch of men with guilty consciences, trying to fix their mistake.)

But Wanda watched with new horror, with tears in her eyes and her hand folded over the top of her mug. 

“There’s cartoons,” Steve said from the doorway.

Wanda didn’t sniffle but wipe her eyes gently, as if he hadn’t already seen the tears in her eyes. “I did not know anyone else was awake,” she said.

Steve grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and pulled out a chair at the table to sit where he could see her (but not the TV). “As far as I can tell, no one else is.” She was staring up at the screen, playing and replaying the same shot of the gaping crater in the ground. The one that showed the buildings at the edge collapsed inward, with cars and streets half-covered by dirt. “Are they saying anything new?”

Wanda shook her head. “No. It is all the same.” (It would be simply asking too much for the world news to discover a new line.) “I have been thinking about accountability.” She didn’t smile exactly but grimace when it seemed like she might have started crying again. Her eyes focused back on the scenes of destruction playing on the news over his head. “That is a good word. I have been trying to find the person accountable,” she put emphasis on that word, “for my parents’ death since I was ten years old. I was driven by this anger that our lives—my brother’s, mine, my entire country’s—had been made worse and the men,” but she wrinkled her nose at that, “the _man_ who was to blame did not even know he had failed to kill me. I had dreams of what I would do to this man.”

“Anger can be useful,” Steve said.

Wanda lifted her hand away from the mug, her fingers twitched and the pink energy coiled around them. It slithered in and out the spaces between her half-bent fingers, “anger made me easy to manipulate. I was happy to be used. I was promised revenge against the man who I thought murdered my parents.” The energy dissipated like smoke, spreading out as it rose until it was nothing. “I did not feel used when Hydra offered me this chance. I did not feel coerced when Ultron asked me to help him. I looked into his head, I saw _annihilation _; why did I not see it before? Now, my brother is dead. My home is dust. I ask myself, is this what I wanted?” she motioned at the screen over his head. “Did I create this monster?”__

__“No.” Steve sat up. “Ultron was created in a lab.” But more importantly, “we can’t change what happened. Dividing up the blame won’t change anything; the only option we have now is to go forward, to do our best, to keep this from happening again.”_ _

__Wanda had tears in her eyes when she smiled at him. “Yes,” was agreeing for the sake of it, there was no meaning to it. She picked her cup up as she got to her feet and glanced up at the news again. “I should try to sleep while there is still time.”_ _

# B Side

__His hand had not slipped, but all the same, if anyone had walked into the lab to find him pulling apart the Mark XX he might have said it had. Tony’s _intention_ had been to look at the data again (it hadn’t changed) but he had wandered away after he’d expanded the search parameters by a week in Malibu and New York. (There was no reason to think the sort of thing that randomly ripped a man out of one universe and stuck him in a nearly identical one would obey any time schedule.) Maybe he’d only meant to take a peek at it, to see if she had assembled her suits in the same manner as his. He’d been curious._ _

__Sitting in the center of the deconstructed suit, he couldn’t even be sure that his curiosity had been satiated. It was funny, how they’d been in this business for the exact same amount of time (wasn’t it). It was funny how she’d caught a warhead, how she’d gone through a hole in space, how she’d fallen lifelessly back into gravity (all caught by amateur camera men, all featured on the news), but she hadn’t done _more_. _ _

__No, she hadn’t built thirty-five suits in six months. But she must have been doing _something_. (Must have, it was impossible to think she hadn’t done something. Created something, built something that would protect her, her friends, the Avengers or the world.) Sitting flat on his ass fiddling with a hinge he would have recognized in his sleep, he felt hollowed out. He felt _unnecessary_. _ _

__But it had _felt_ important, it had _felt_ necessary in the long-long months after New York, to create a force capable of withstanding an alien invasion. It was something he _could_ do and held up against all the things he couldn’t (like explain how New York happened, like bring back Phil Coulson, like _sleep_ ) it was the only choice that made sense. The world had grown, in a single moment, from a shiny blue orb floating in a big black expanse of space, into an unknown number of galaxies and _realms_ filled to the brim with things that defied science. _ _

__You couldn’t protect people against things you couldn’t anticipate and Tony was human, was mortal, was a _scientist_ and there was no anticipating things that defied all three at once. _ _

__Sitting in the wreckage of her perfect suit (and it was, from a design standpoint, from the view of one who had made twice as many, almost entirely perfect, if somewhat basic), Tony’s entire life felt _pointless_. This other Tony had done _none_ of the things he had done, while he was consumed with panic and dread, she had—_ _

__“Jarvis,” Tony said. He dropped the hinge on the floor and wiped his greasy fingers on the shop rag rolled up in his lap._ _

__“Sir?”_ _

__“Show me the project files from May 2012 to December 2012, bring them up.” He shoved himself up to his feet so he could stand by the display. Dum-E hummed when he walked closer and Tony waved a hand at him before he could get any ideas about trying to be useful. The holographic display filled up with files. There were files for War Machine, Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk, Veronica, Hawkeye, and even one for Thor (although that man did not care at all for invention. He had a hammer and the ability to control lightning and needed nothing else)._ _

__There was a file labeled ‘baseball diamond’. When he clicked on it, the display flooded with schematics for a baseball field. It was covered in little facts and figures and trivia on baseball, thoughtful notes on the grass, the bases, and the pitcher’s mound. “She built this?” he asked and then shook his head, “did I build the baseball diamond.”_ _

__“Yes, sir. It was completed by November 2012. It was intended for use by Captain Rogers, sir,” Jarvis said and then: “are you experiencing trouble with your memory, sir?”_ _

__“Did he use it?”_ _

__“The field is still in use, sir. It suffered minor electrical damage during a particularly intense game but has since been remodeled. Recently, a viewing box was added for spectators who wished to watch a game without the fear of death.”_ _

__“Death?” Tony repeated. He tapped on an image in the corner. It was a baseball that opened a second file that spilled contents everywhere. He had been alone in his lab, building an army (a _legion_ ) that could withstand an alien invasion and she had been building baseballs. “Do we have footage of one of the games?”_ _

__“Which game would you like to see, sir?”_ _

__“I don’t care,” Tony closed the files, picked up the drink he’d brought down with him (nothing alcoholic, if only because Pepper had watched him upstairs, making little noises under her breath every time he drifted too close to the bar) and went to sit in the hot rod. “Pick one, put it up on the big screen.” He pulled the car door closed and prepared himself to be outraged._ _

__The baseball diamond was outrageous; it was ridiculous. It was Clint with a bat over his shoulder, laughing at something Natasha said off to the side of the screen. “I can hit a ball,” sounded like the end of a long line of attacks against his person. “Didn’t we agree no Mjolnir? I thought we agreed no Mjolnir.”_ _

__Thor protested, with humor, before he dropped the hammer._ _

__“Alright, alright,” was Tony in the Iron Man suit, with her arms up hushing the whole assembly of super heroes. Even Rhodey was there, looking casual in a borrowed suit (one that didn’t have a massive gun on its shoulder, one that wasn’t War Machine) standing right next to Steve Rogers with a baseball mitt on one hand, looking quietly humble. “It has been brought to my attention that our last game was unfair,” and everyone looked sideways at Steve who glanced up with a half-smile on his face, “I tried to disagree but apparently the rules of baseball forbid a team of consisting of just one individual. Therefore, someone must be on Cap’s team. Someone has to volunteer, who’s it going to be?”_ _

__They took turns muttering things to one another, glancing up and down the line until they finally got to Bruce who had been kicking dirt clods with his toes, “oh no,” he said. “I _watch_ , I don’t—Tony—I don’t play.”_ _

__“I need at least three people on my team,” Steve said. “You have three people that can fly on your team.” He even took the time to point them out, as if anyone needed to be told who they were._ _

__“You’re a super soldier,” Tony retorted._ _

__“I can’t fly.”_ _

__“Fine,” was almost as flirtatious as it was ridiculous, “Rhodey, buddy? Soldier solidarity? You like old men, right?”_ _

__“Tony.” (The best thing about the way Rhodey said his name was that it was precisely the same as he said it in the real world.) “Don’t do that. We talked about that. Don’t do that.” But he still moved down the line until he was standing by Rogers, who had a hell of a team with Bruce who was looking at the bat he’d been handed like it would murder him and Rhodey who put himself a good two feet away so nobody would think Tony was serious._ _

__“Fair?” Tony asked._ _

__Steve shrugged. “Do you think it’s fair?” (Oh, but look at how he smiled at her, like she was the god damn stars and stripes.)_ _

__The game, once it finally started, was a disaster. A great show of theatrics and playfully bad sports. It should have mattered, it should have pissed him off, but there was watching them, all of the Avengers, having fun. (And that did piss him off. Just not in the way he’d thought it would.)_ _

# A Side

__It was the news that kept her awake, the non-stop replaying of Sokovia. The image of the crater that had been made when, according to eye witness accounts, a large portion of the city had been torn from the surface of the planet. It had been large enough that if it had struck the earth, it would have decimated the planet._ _

__Sokovia._ _

__That was the bit that kept her awake. Sokovia where Baron Von Strucker was hiding. Where the last Hydra base was. Sokovia where Wanda had been, where she’d stuck her fingers into Tony’s head and stirred up his nightmares._ _

__Sokovia where her husband was going (today, in a different world but _today_ )._ _

__Tony was in the shower, crouching in the hot water with her head tipped back against the wall, repeating in her head (over and over and over again) that it would be _fine_ that Steve would have made the necessary arrangements to the plan to be safe. That it wouldn’t end in disaster, that they had faced worse, that they had always won before._ _

__That kind of thinking was dangerous; that was Steve’s sort of thinking. He would win, good would win, justice would win, because it had always won because it should always win. Ideals didn’t win wars but nobody had ever told Steve Rogers that._ _

__Tony was _tired_ , beyond an acceptable level of exhaustion and any hope she had of reassuring herself was lost in the forty-something-hours of unrelenting consciousness. The hot water was a constant assault on her skin, a nagging, terrible reminder of how exhausted she was. Every part of her was aching for relief and no matter how still she laid, she couldn’t _sleep_._ _

__But she couldn’t think either, not about anything but Sokovia. Not about anything but the newscaster explaining (again) that rescue efforts were underway but nobody Had Ever Seen anything of this scale. This was Unprecedented. Not even New York compared to the Devastation in Sokovia._ _

__The shower did nothing. Like a dozen wasted glasses of warm milk (and a fond, fond memory of alcohol-induced-unconsciousness) there was nothing to calm the storm of dread stampeding through her mind. If she could wedge a single thought in between the cascade of sure defeat that was burying her from the inside out, it was only that she was still _here_ in this world, still _here_ surrounded by the endless array of Tony’s brilliant inventions._ _

__Fresh from a shower, she was wearing his watch-and-gauntlet, sitting on the end of his bed with her hands pressed against her temples hard enough it made her head ache. There was too much _silence_ and too much _noise_ all at the same time. Too much, too much, too—_ _

__“Tony?” sounded very much like Pepper. It looked like her too, wearing nothing but bare feet, tiptoeing in through the open door. She was dressed to impress, looking sad and worried. One of her hands was halfway out, like she was going to touch (her) but stopped. “What’s wrong? Where did you go? Friday said you left.”_ _

__“I can’t sleep,” Tony said. “I’ve been trying, I’ve tried everything—I can’t sleep. I can’t _think_. I’m a piping hot mess. I—”_ _

__Pepper picked up the remote off the end of the bed and turned the TV off, the sudden silence of the room was as unwelcomed as the noise had been before. “You have to think,” was gentle and _firm_ , exactly the sort of unyielding that Pepper always was. “We need _our_ Tony back.”_ _

__“They’re going to Sokovia,” Tony said. “My team, _my_ Avengers, we had the intelligence earlier but there were doubts, we didn’t have everything we needed and it was stupid, it was so stupid, he said after your birthday. He said there was nothing to suggest that Hydra planned to make a move, that it didn’t matter if we put it off a day. He said it would give us time to prepare.”_ _

__Pepper sat next to her, her arm slid around Tony’s back. Her worried face blurred out of focus and back in. She was a perfect match, right down to the freckles and the color of her eyes. Her white teeth and her pink lips and her voice, “they’ll be okay,” didn’t sound like she believed it for a minute._ _

__“Like they were okay here?” Tony asked._ _

__The way Pepper shook her head was utterly helpless. “The first battle at Sokovia went very smoothly. They captured the base, the retrieved the scepter—Ultron happened here,” Pepper pressed her foot against the floor in emphasis. “Tony wouldn’t build Ultron twice. He knows what would happen. Your team will be fine.”_ _

__“I’m not there,” she said. “I’m not there to help them, to protect them, to—”_ _

__Pepper pulled her closer, to cut off the flow of words or offer comfort there was no way of knowing. “You have to sleep,” she repeated, “you have to be able to think. We have to figure this out.”_ _

__“I can’t,” was a repeat, a rehash, a rewording of the very same thing. Tony pulled away, turned enough to pull at the blanket and throw it with as much success as a toddler having a temper tantrum. “The bed’s empty, the room’s cold, the building’s wrong.”_ _

__Pepper smoothed her hands down her skirt. “I can stay,” didn’t seem entirely like what she’d like to do. “The bed won’t be empty.”_ _

__Tony sighed. “You don’t look very much like my husband, Pepper. I appreciate the offer but—”_ _

__“It’s not about you,” she said. “You think you’re the only one that can’t sleep? I don’t know where Tony is. I don’t know if he’s safe—I don’t know if he’ll ever come back.” There were tears on her lashes, “I’ve got you on one side, running off in the middle of the night so I don’t even know if you’ll be back and Rhodey on the other asking how we prove you are who you are. I don’t know how to prove who you are. I don’t know if you are who you say you are.” She shrugged, motioned at nothing, “It feels like you are, but that’s not real.”_ _

__“You can’t sleep,” Tony whispered._ _

__“I can’t sleep,” Pepper agreed, “I can’t sleep and I’m running Stark Industries, and my boyfriend’s gone, and the whole world is begging for a statement about how we feel about Sokovia. I don’t have a statement. I don’t know how I feel.” That didn’t seem like she meant to say it, her hands slapped against her lap and she let out a breath through her nose that wasn’t precisely a sigh. Her lips pulled up in her press-conference smile and she looked at Tony. “I can stay, maybe you can sleep. I need him back.”_ _

__There was a great deal of difference between _need_ and _want_ that Tony thought deserved a mention but there was also the slim chance that Pepper’s presence in the bed could help her sleep. It wasn’t about her (this time), it was about _her_ Steve, about Sokovia. “Fine,” Tony agreed, “let’s give it a try.”_ _

__“Fine,” Pepper agreed._ _

__The bed was huge, the space between them like a chasm, once they laid down. Pepper sat with her back against the headboard and the blanket pulled over her legs. She was scrolling through something on her tablet, making faces at the screen. Tony stared at the ceiling (thought about Steve, about the schematics of the Hydra base, about Wanda, about nightmares, about—) “Move closer,” Pepper said._ _

__“Why?” Tony asked. She moved anyway, sliding across the bed so her elbow was bumping Pepper’s leg._ _

__“Because,” Pepper answered as her fingers slid into Tony’s hair, “he always falls asleep when I do this.” Her fingertips were soft and warm as they ran through Tony’s hair. They were steady and familiar, gently following the curl of Tony’s hair now and again. It was something to concentrate on, a nearness and an imitation of intimacy that felt real enough. “He’s never slept well.”_ _

__“I noticed.” Tony pulled the blanket up to her shoulder and pulled the pillow down so it was fluffy under her cheek. She rolled onto her side and tipped her head up to look at Pepper. “You know the you where I’m from never would have dated me.”_ _

__Pepper’s smile was forgiving. “I’m not attracted to women,” seemed to regard that whole matter closed. “Close your eyes.” It was easy enough to listen, to concentrate on the fingers in her hair, the gentle trail of Pepper’s touch. The world was narrowing down to the sound of Tony’s breath trapped between her face and Pepper’s thigh, the growing warmth under the blanket, the calm certainty of the body next to her. The storm of noise in her brain was getting dim, the worries and fears fading back into their dark pit. Pepper said, “who _did_ you marry?”_ _

__Tony was half-asleep, saying, “Steve.” (She could have hope for Steve, the way he had for her, she could bend reality just to make it fit. Steve would be fine; they all would be fine. She would get back to them.)_ _

# B Side

__When Tony had gone back upstairs in search of something for dinner (and maybe, just maybe, something to take the edge off the anger in his gut) the liquor had gone missing. It was no longer on the bar, not in the kitchen, not in the cupboards, not in the closets. “Jarvis, who took the booze?”_ _

__“Ms. Potts, sir.”_ _

__That just went to show that no matter the universe, Pepper was uniquely protective of him. It would have been endearing if it weren’t more annoying. _He_ had not sworn off drinking and there was no reason to think that his actions should count against _her_ spotless record. “I guess I’m going out, Jarvis.”_ _

__“Unfortunately, sir, I cannot allow you to do so,” Jarvis said. (Jarvis said things like ‘unfortunately’ and ‘sorry sir’ and he never seemed to really mean it.)_ _

__“What? On whose authority?” Tony was looking up at the ceiling (fully aware that Jarvis was not contained in the ceiling)._ _

__“Captain Rogers requested that you not leave the premises, sir.”_ _

__“You can tell Captain Rogers that this is my house and those are my cars and I’ll decide when I want to be in which one.” He took a step toward the garage, fully intent on doing exactly what he said he would do, “did he tell you why I can’t leave my own home?”_ _

__“He did, sir.”_ _

__“Don’t keep me in suspense.” Tony was halfway down the stairs before he got the answer._ _

__“I’m afraid I can’t say, sir.”_ _

__“Let me get this straight. You’re not supposed to let me leave,” and even as he said that, a flicker of movement made him turn his head to the side. There was one of Ms. Stark’s perfect suits staring back at him. “What’s this?”_ _

__“I’m afraid I can’t let you leave, sir.”_ _

__The suit didn’t seem to have any intention of reacting violently to Tony’s presence (but one could never tell with a faceless suit of armor). It was idling at the bottom of the steps, preventing him from going toward the garage without appearing hostile. “And where is my dear husband?”_ _

__“I’m afraid I can’t say, sir.”_ _

__There had been hiccups along the way while he was building the Iron Legion, there had been mishaps and miscommunications and bugs that needed to be worked out. But he couldn’t swear that Jarvis had ever staged a coup against him regardless of who had tried to order him to do so. Tony shifted his weight back a step and considered his options. The suit and Jarvis couldn’t _kill_ him but without knowing exactly what sort of force they were willing to use he had limited hope of overcoming one (or both) of them. Setting aside his annoyance at being grounded to his house, he had no pressing reason to start a fight with Jarvis. “What can you say?”_ _

__“I’m sorry, sir,” Jarvis said promptly._ _

__Tony sighed. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it buddy.” He hovered for a moment before retreating up the stairs. “Tomorrow?” he said to the general area around him, “we’re having a serious conversation about who owns this house.”_ _

__“Of course, sir,” Jarvis agreed._ _

__There was nothing to drink (not such much as a drop of cooking Sherry) but the fridge and the cabinets were stocked full of delicious things to eat. He was hungry but not ambitious so he made pasta that would fill up his stomach (so he could concentrate on how Steve managed to hijack his AI into obeying him)._ _

__“Sir,” Jarvis said while Tony was watching the pasta boil. Almost immediately after, Natasha’s voice was shouting through the speakers, “damn it,” was accompanied by the sound of fire, “Tony?”_ _

__“Where are you?” he shouted back._ _

__“Sokovia,” Natasha said. “We can’t penetrate the shield surrounded the castle.”_ _

__Sokovia. They were in Sokovia. (Where Wanda was.) “Is Banner with you?” Tony asked. He didn’t bother with turning off, “Jarvis—show me where they are,” and like a magic wand, his disobedient son said:_ _

__“Of course, sir,” as Tony crashed into the door to the lab. Even before he was inside properly the whole thing was lighting up with real-time footage and facts and figures of real-time events. He was watching the assault on the castle from thousands of miles away, feeling the way his stomach dropped right out of the bottom of his body._ _

__“The shield!” sounded like Rhodey, “We’re getting our asses kicked.”_ _

__“The power source is under the North Tower,” Tony said. “Is _Banner_ with you?” _ _

__“Yes,” was Steve’s voice, all out of breath. The sound he made when he was fighting six-seven guys with guns. He was a flickering image in the middle of a snow-covered forest. (How many times had Tony had the same argument with him, the one about the necessity of weapons and how a shield was a _shield_ wasn’t a weapon. But Captain America had woken up from the ice with a distaste for firearms and why would he need one when he could just throw a motorcycle at someone.) “I didn’t want to bring you into this.”_ _

__That was a lovely sentiment for a stupid man. Tony couldn’t even think of a single thing to say to that; for a minute he was just watching them fight—holding his breath, thinking it would be _alright_ this time (and why this time? What was missing from _this_ time to make it okay.) But it was a punch in the gut when the Natasha said, “Clint’s been hit!”_ _

__“Get Banner out of there,” Tony said._ _

__“We have to finish what we came here to do,” Steve said just he was knocked over by Pietro. When he got up again, flickering in and out of focus on the satellite image, he said, “we’ve got an enhanced on the field.”_ _

__“There’s _two_ enhanced, and you just met the friendly one. Do yourselves and every civilian in the area a favor and _get Banner out of there_ ,” Tony said. “Loki’s scepter is in the castle, _don’t_ go in alone.”_ _

__“Sir,” Jarvis said, “the energy source for the shield appears to be disabled.”_ _

__“You got this?” was Natasha over comms, not talking to him._ _

__“Yeah,” was Steve’s answer. He was looking up at the castle. “Rhodey, get Clint and get out of here. Natasha—”_ _

__“I’ve got the big guy,” she answered._ _

__“Thor, you and I will take the castle.”_ _

__Tony rubbed his fingers across his mouth, watched them scatter to obey and shook his head. There were tears in his eyes (angry ones, furious ones, unfair ones). “This is why I couldn’t leave?”_ _

__“They anticipated they might need your assistance with the unknown shielding abilities around the castle, sir,” Jarvis answered._ _

__The image got blurry and refocused. The satellite couldn’t see inside the castle, couldn’t see all the hallways and passages where Wanda could hide. Maybe she wasn’t so bad _now_ in his world, after she’d switched sides but she was a raw nerve with catastrophic power prowling through the hallways. “Where are they Jarvis? Where’s Steve? Tell me what’s happening.”_ _

__It would be okay because Wanda had hated _him_ , his name, his tech, his legacy. It would be okay because Steve had been okay. It would be okay because they would get out, unharmed._ _

__It would be okay._ _


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 4

# A SIDE

There was a definite effectiveness at putting one’s hair in a pony tail that was impossible to replicate without enough hair to pull back and a decent hair tie. There was always the option of a headband to keep the curls and waves out of her face but she hadn’t thought ahead well enough to have purchased one the day before. Looking through the dresser, suitcases and bathroom vanity drawers hadn’t produced a headband either. (She had thought, perhaps Pepper would have one. Or perhaps this other Tony. It was equally possible.) She did find a baseball cap in the lab that she turned around backward and used to trap her hair away from her face.

The lab was hollow, every little noise loud against the quiet. The lackluster data Friday had spent the past day compiling was glowing blue and unyielding in front of her. (The summary of which had been astutely reduced to two words and an honorific: “No change, sir.”) There was no question that reality had changed around; no question at all that Tony was not where she should have been. She had been picked up from one place and dropped in another; she _knew_ that, she just could not prove it. 

“I didn’t know how you took your coffee,” Pepper said as she came into the lab with no warning. (Friday hadn’t so much as whispered an indication that someone else was coming.) There Tony was with the clothes she intended to wear laying over the back of the chair, dressed in nothing but one of the other Tony’s shirts and her brand-new underwear. She was sitting cross-legged in the computer chair grinding her teeth at the unchanging data, reminding herself nothing mattered the way getting home mattered. Pepper was simply there, in jeans and a loose T-shirt (wearing no bra by the look of things) carrying coffee with a sort of perfectly-composed manic energy that meant she probably hadn’t slept lately. “Tony likes espresso usually—what are you, where are your clothes?”

Tony motioned over her shoulder to where they were laying. (And if she had planned to wear this other Tony’s stupidly nice jeans rather than the new clothes bought for her, that was nobody’s business but hers.) “I—I got out of the habit of putting pants on before breakfast,” she said.

Pepper slapped the coffee down in front of her. “Because you’re married?” was an accusation. Pepper looked over her shoulder for a chair, didn’t find one but found a rolling tool box with rounded edges that was sturdy enough to sit on and pulled that over. She crossed her legs at the knee and set her coffee on her leg as she stared at Tony intently. 

It was very obvious Pepper wanted something; it was just less obvious what it was she wanted. “Throw me a bone. I can tell I did something but—”

“You married Steve,” was a shout rolled up into a whisper that came out like a hiss, dragging every syllable along for the ride. Pepper’s fingers flexed around her coffee mug. (That didn’t clear things up, exactly, but leave Tony trying to work out if she was meant to apologize for cheating on Pepper or if the thought of marrying Steve was so horrifying it defaulted as a Reprehensible Action.) “And you _told_ me.”

“He’s not the same bag of dicks where I’m from.”

“You broke his arm.” Pepper was folding her whole body in half just to keep up the pretense of whispering confidentially. (That might have been worth the time and effort if not for how the entire lab was being continuously monitored by Friday and anything said inside of it was definitely being recorded no matter how quietly it was said.) “That’s your husband.”

Tony pointed in (approximately) the direction of the Avengers’ compound. “ _That_ is not my husband. That’s an angry little boy in a costume.”

Pepper sat up straight to convey she was disappointed in him. “Are you going to tell him?”

“No. I would prefer that you didn’t tell him or anyone else either. I didn’t mean to tell you,” (she didn’t remember mentioning it either but that was the problem with falling asleep in hostile situations, you never knew what you were going to say). 

“You broke his arm,” Pepper repeated. That seemed like she was trying very hard to be upset about it but, “ _Steve_?” seemed much more authentically upset. There was worry in that, in the way she half-laughed at it, at how she leaned back for a moment before she remembered there was no seat back. “Steve.”

“Just because I married him doesn’t mean your Tony—”

“I thought you, _he_ didn’t like him. Now I’m thinking, all those times he complained about Steve being _perfect_ , his _perfect_ teeth, his _perfect_ body, his _perfect_ —should I have been paying more attention?”

Tony was not required to participate in this conversation so she took the opportunity to sip her coffee (and found it bitter and black, not at all sweet and creamy as she expected). 

“I thought it was just—whatever it is with his Dad, we all know Tony has unresolved issues with his Father and he’s mentioned a few _hundred_ times how his Father was obsessed with finding Steve but, you really married _Steve_? Steve doesn’t even like you.” The rambling came to a brief stop, Pepper was looking at her again, keeping still in a way that suggested a word might be able to be squeezed in edgewise if one was quick. 

“Oh, Howard was obsessed with finding Captain America?” Tony said. She pressed her hand against her chest. “I never knew.”

Pepper had never looked less impressed with her. “I’ve been up all night. I keep trying to worry about whether Tony is safe, whether he’s coming home, but I start thinking about whether or not he secretly wants to have sex with Steve.”

Tony sipped her coffee (and was reminded that it was terrible) and nodded sympathetically. It felt like the right call except for how Pepper’s eyebrows went up and her fingers tapped against the side of her coffee mug. “Oh,” she said, “uh. Yes. He probably does. Doesn’t mean he would do it. Despite what the papers like to say, we Tony’s are capable of controlling our rabid lust.”

“That was not comforting.” Pepper sipped her coffee, looked horrified by it and then peered into the cup, “I gave you the wrong one.” Upon switching, Tony had sweet black coffee which wasn’t perfect but was noticeably better than it had been before. Pepper sipped the bitter black coffee and apparently liked it, she sighed and shook her head. “Do you have any ideas?”

No. Not a single one. “Hopefully soon,” Tony said. Immediately would have been better than soon but no ideas seemed to be hovering on the horizon. “Things are different where I’m from, Pepper. Him and I, we’re not the same people. My Steve and your Steven are not the same people. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re right,” did not believe her for a second. “I need to get dressed, I have to get back to work.”

# B SIDE

“The scepter is in the north tower in a secret passageway.” 

Thor glanced sideways at him, one eyebrow lifting toward his hairline and a general gesture toward the north and the tower. “He sounds like her,” Thor took the time to say. It wasn’t what Steve was expecting to follow along with the actions. “Bossy.” 

“She’s not bossy,” Steve said. (She was authoritative. She had leadership qualities. Bossy was what you called the playground dictator that told everyone how to play tag.) 

“I appreciate the friendly team chit chat,” was Tony from thousands of miles away. His voice was tight with apprehension. “You need to work fast. The less time you’re standing around, the better your chances of getting out unharmed.”

Steve pointed up at the tower and Thor who motioned blatantly at the sound of not-even-their-Tony telling them what to do as proof of _being bossy_. Steve rolled his eyes and Thor grinned as he took off toward the tower. “What exactly am I going to be harmed by?” Steve asked, “how do you know?”

“I’d rather you not be harmed by anything,” Tony countered. “I’ve been in this castle, Cap. It doesn’t end well for everyone. Is Banner out of the field?”

“Yes,” Natasha answered. “I’ve got Banner and Barton, we’re waiting on Cap and Thor.” 

The castle was drafty (in his limited experience, castles did tend to be drafty) with narrow hallways and abrupt turns. The whole inside was cast in gray light, dim and hard to see by. (And if they had enough power to use their weapons, and enough advanced technology to have a damn shield, it stood to reason they should have had the common sense to use _lights_ too.) 

“I am in the north tower,” Thor said. “There are computers.” His voice across the comms had the quality of being amused to announce the presence of something as useless as computers. Thor didn’t view most electronics as important but he’d slowly come to understand that while he thought little of them, they were almost always _significant_ to the rest of them. 

“If Rhodey’s still there, he should be able to copy the files,” Tony said.

“I’m here,” Rhodey agreed.

Steve had gotten used to the voices in his ear, all the chatter and whispering. The background noise of shouts and explosions that created an entire miniature universe in his right ear. Nine out of ten times it didn’t bother him at all, it was simply something he’d gotten used to, and then it was the tenth time, like now, when he was listening for footsteps in a drafty castle, trying not to make too much noise himself. The silence was too settled, the whole castle a void of noise. Outside had been cannon fire and bullets. It had been cracking tree limbs and heavy artillery. His ears were full of white noise as he climbed the steps, listening (as close as he could) for the sound of enemies approaching. 

Thor said, “I have the scepter.”

“Congratulations,” was acid through the comms. “I’ll get you a sticker when you get back. Get _out_ of there.”

Steve turned a corner, heard the sound of rapid footsteps just beyond a guard standing at the end of the hall. He kicked the man forward in time to see Baron Strucker scuttling toward the steps. “Baron Strucker,” he said, “Hydra’s number one thug.”

(“Rhodey do you have the download?” Tony asked.

“Yeah I got it.”

“Then _why_ are you still there? Get Strucker and Steve and get out.”) was playing in his skull overtop everything Strucker was saying, reverberating through the white noise.

“You’ll mention how I cooperated, won’t you?” Strucker said. His eyes slid to the right, he almost smiled. Steve turned his head, (and this is what happened when you couldn’t hear properly), just in time to see the girl wearing red lift her hands. They were reddish-shimmering-full of energy that gathered but didn’t crackle. Instinct made him lift the shield but the motion was too late, the way the girl moved was too swift, he was hit in the face with that gathering pulse of energy. It was like fire in his eyes and his nose, filling up his ears with terrible-noise.

He didn’t scream but shout, cover his face with his hands. The room felt like it was getting dim, the little tinny voice in his ear was screaming at the end of the tunnel. When he opened his eyes again, there was Strucker grinning at him.

“What is Captain America afraid of?” he said.

It felt like a tide, in his skull, an almost glittery misperception. Steve didn’t have much time to gulp down air, not enough time to see where the woman had gone or _think_ properly but enough time to punch Strucker in the face, enough time to gasp, “I’m compromised,” before it dragged him under.

# B SIDE

There was something to be said for rationality. There was something to be said for that ability to stand in the middle of your almost certain death and think around that. He used to have that, not-so-long ago, that ability to _think_ regardless of the circumstances. (And oh boy wasn’t he the master of circumstances, drinking and fucking and starting fights. He made _weapons_ that killed people while he was working off last night’s hangover, putting all his thoughts and all his guilt into little compartments where they wouldn’t spill out.) It felt like (now) his brain was on a hair trigger, always wound too tight, always jumping to conclusions with no time to reconsider. 

It shouldn’t have been _relief_ before anger, it shouldn’t have been how his breath got knocked out of his body, shouldn’t have been the spring unwinding itself and his brain throwing out thoughts like: _It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your fault_ like it was a _good_ thing that Wanda had attacked Steve. (It felt like it though, just for a minute.) When the anger came it was his fist against the nearest surface, the jump and clatter of tools and pieces. Dum-E worried in his corner and Tony breathed, “fuck” between his teeth.

“Rhodey!” was Natasha in the field, too far away to go back. 

“I’m on it,” Rhodey said. “I see him— Cap? Captain?” There was no visual but the inconstant exterior of the castle. There was a blur with a red cape and Thor’s voice over the comms. 

“We must go,” Thor said as he smashed through a section of the wall. The image flickered again as Rhodey said:

“Come on Cap, on your feet.” He grunted with effort, “no it’s fine, I’ll pick up the shield too.” (This was the sort of banter that he appreciated when he was there to see things in real time.) “You’re heavier than you look, Steve.”

In another universe, where Steve Rogers was bland as white bread, he’d picked himself up from the hit like it was nothing. It would be the same here (sure it would, because so many things were the same here). “Natasha,” Tony said as he spread his hand out and pushed it against the desk. Things were falling out of their compartments in his head. “Where are you going? Who’s in charge when Cap is down? Where do you go?”

Natasha didn’t answer immediately, when she did, she said: “if you make me regret trusting you, I’ll kill you.” (And really, he wouldn’t expect any less from her. Although perhaps with less genuine threat.) “We’re supposed to regroup in New York.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Tony said. 

“You’ll need Pepper or Happy,” Natasha said. “You don’t exactly look like her so I doubt the plane will leave without one of them.”

“Plane?”

“Yes, _plane_. We’ve got Steve, we’re leaving. Call Pepper,” Natasha said. Then the line went dead. 

Almost immediately Jarvis prompted, “shall I try Ms. Potts?”

“Just a minute buddy, give me a minute.” (Just a minute to think through the problem; to think through the compulsion to go and see what he could do. The lingering nightmare always trapped inside his skull. Phantom Steve’s voice saying things like: it’s your fault.) “Right,” he said, “let’s do it. Call Pepper.” He turned away from the fading hologram, out through the door and up the stairs. He went up to his room while Jarvis went through the trouble of dialing the phone. By the time he’d reached the guest room, Pepper’s annoyed voice was filtering through the house speakers.

“I assume this is important?”

“I need a flight to New York,” Tony said.

He couldn’t see but he could hear Pepper on the verge of pinching her nose at him. It was the tone of her voice, the exhausted way she sounded when she was just tired of putting up with him. “Why?”

“Steve took a hit,” Tony said.

“What?”

“There’s an enhanced that can make you experience nightmares as vivid hallucinations—it’s short acting but not everyone can just shake it off. The team said they regroup in New York I need to meet them.” He’d stacked every piece of clothing he owned on the bed before he realized he had no luggage (or really that he might not need all these clothes). 

“Tony,” Pepper cut in, “the team will take care of Steve, we _all_ need you _here_ figuring out how to get her back.”

Well that was the problem wasn’t it, he was a super genius with genius friends and an AI capable of processing information almost as fast as he could and between all of them the only evidence they’d amassed in regards to the switch was that Tony existed here. There was no backward engineering a hole in the fabric of reality when he couldn’t find any proof there ever had been one. But he did know Wanda. He did know what she did when she stuck her fingers in your brain. “Pepper,” sounded calmer than he felt. “I’m going to New York. You can get me a plane or I can take a suit.”

“You cannot take one of her suits,” Pepper said immediately.

“Then get me a plane.” If she’d been here, they would have been having a staring match, his anger and her cool disapproval. “Pepper, it’s important.”

Her voice had the tiniest break in it, “fine,” didn’t sound like she agreed at all, “I’ll send Happy to get you. Do _not_ leave the house in one of her cars. Happy will drive you, and you will tell _no one_ that you are Tony Stark. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” Tony said.

# A SIDE

Idle hands, as the saying went, were the devil’s plaything. Only Tony had been thinking (for more than a few years) that whoever thought that gem up hadn’t meant it to be applied to the woman that would be considered ‘the merchant of death’. They certainly wouldn’t have said it anywhere this Tony who created truly fantastic machines when his idle hands got to working. No, when people saw her with a screwdriver in her hand they started talking really fast about why it was most likely a bad idea.

Idle hands were what Tony aspired to; not something she could manage. Because busy hands were a busy mind and if she was redesigning the Mark 42 how Tony had always-meant-to-but-didn’t. It wasn’t her favorite suit and it wasn’t the most useful suit but it felt like the most necessary suit. 

Was that what he felt like? Like there was a threat over his shoulder all the time, like the walls were listening in? Like his brain was filling up with static white-noise and the floor would drop out without warning. (And dread, dread like a news channel on mute, playing non-stop coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Sokovia.) 

So, Tony was tinkering with the propulsion system for the Mark 42, thinking and rethinking the code and the implanted trackers that controlled and called for the suit. There was a long, dirty list of notes and suggested improvements filling out 42’s file. (And that little red dot in the corner of its folder indicating it had been purposefully destroyed.)

“Sir,” interrupted the Beastie Boys, “Colonel Rhodes is approaching.”

“Let him in,” Tony said. She wiped her fingers on a shop rag and then tucked it into her back pocket. The shirt she’d been intended to wear (most of the morning) was still lying over the back of the chair. She was pulling off the other Tony’s shirt when the door opened and Rhodey walked in. He had all the swagger of a man who had come to get answers but was unexpectedly met with a half-naked woman instead. “I didn’t realize you were that close,” she said.

Always a gentleman Rhodey recovered from the shock of seeing her breasts by staring pointedly at the floor. “I thought Friday would tell you.”

“I’ve got a shirt on now,” she said. She tugged it down into place. (She thought, not for the first time, about how she really should bother to wear a bra more often. Not that she ever had, or would start now.) “Steven send you?” 

Rhodey double-checked to make sure it was safe to look up and once he was certain he said, “I wanted to come.”

“That must have been convenient for Steven when he told you to come,” she picked up her bottle of water to take a drink and watched how Rhodey tried-and-failed not to frown at her. It wasn’t precisely the same as the way her Rhodey frowned at her. “It’s not a bad strategy. It’s actually such a clever idea I’m having trouble believing Steven came up with it himself.” She dropped the water bottle back on the desk top. “Almost smells like something Natasha would do.”

“Fine,” Rhodey conceded (as if he were being forced, as if he had been doing such an excellent job concealing his motivation up to that moment), “I was asked to come and talk to you. But I wanted to come. Steve believes you are who you say you are.”

Tony sat in the desk chair, pulled her legs up to cross them and shrugged as she said, “and you don’t.”

“You’re not behaving in a way that I would expect my friend to behave.”

That was a laugh. “I haven’t ever been exactly well known for behaving in general, Rhodey. We aren’t exactly the same, your Tony and me, but the basics line up. So, what is it I could possibly say that would convince you I am who I say I am?” She made a show of thinking (a bit of chin scratching, some squinting eyes), “what would I know about you, about us, that nobody else would know? That we wouldn’t tell anyone so I couldn’t just have looked it up?”

“I don’t think there’s anything you could sa—”

“How about how many times you had sex with Tony at college?” she asked. “We, him and I that is, were underage, you know.”

Rhodey’s whole face was suddenly bloodless, his voice stuttered to a stop. The brief, encompassing, embarrassment gave way to a sudden resurgence of blood in his cheeks and he scowled as he said, “I don’t—I wouldn’t—That wasn’t—” But he’d been caught and he knew it and she _knew_ it. “We don’t talk about that.”

“I know we don’t. Because we were sixteen, you were eighteen, when we met. Only seventeen when we graduated. I don’t know how it went for him but, it took me three weeks of constant effort to get your pants off, Colonel Rhodes and even then, I think you were waiting for Howard to pop out of a closet about how you deflowered his only daughter.”

“I didn’t realize he was sixteen,” Rhodey countered. “It was college, everyone experiments in college. He didn’t tell me until after.”

She snorted. “We Tonys do like getting what we want regardless of the consequences.” She had meant it as a joke, as a call-back to the now long-ago days of when she had spent her free time dragging Rhodey into situations he protested as illegal or immoral. It wasn’t her fault at sixteen, teenagers had the habit of making gut choices even when there was ample evidence it wouldn’t turn out well. 

But this Rhodey was just barely on the other side of a worst-case scenario, up to his ears with recent memories of catastrophes. The smile he’d almost managed fell instantly. “That’s another reason I’m here,” was as condescending as Steven’s tone of voice. The exact tone of a parent gently correcting an unruly child. (At very least Rhodey was older than her and not by a technicality.) “Nobody knows what your intentions are. We want to help but we need to know we’re helping to reach a mutual goal.”

Tony’s hands folded around her crossed legs. She took in a breath and considered the alternatives. There was a half-dozen placating things that came instantly to mind; the sort of promises that threw vague insults at every member of this universe that stayed happily complacent. “I’ve spent the past day staring at this,” she motioned at the screen that showed an endless supply of data that meant _nothing_ to her. 

“We just— _I_ just want to know if I can trust you. Steve doesn’t doubt you. Friday doesn’t. The suits don’t. Pepper,” he motioned over his shoulder, “said you have to be Tony, that you’re exactly like him. That no spy was that good.” Rhodey took a step closer, glanced sideways at the bits of the half-assembled propulsion suit with a nervous frown and then back at her. “ _I_ want to be convinced. I _need_ to be convinced.” (Because Rhodey would never stop looking for his friend, would never hesitate to protect him no matter the cost. Because Rhodey was more dangerous than Steve; Steve believed in principle, Rhodey believed in action.)

What would matter enough to Rhodey to erase the doubt. What would be private, between them, that wouldn’t ever have been written down or discussed. (Besides the sex, that had only ever gone undiscussed because Howard really-would-have been pissed. Because Rhodey had plans and dreams that didn’t involve getting disemboweled by a rich white guy.) “The hum-drum-vee is back there,” Tony said. It felt like _centuries_ since she’d been that person, in a desert, (with a drink), mouthing off to a man who was far too good a friend to have to put up with her. 

This Tony, in this world, he must have said the same thing because Rhodey looked like he was staring face first at a ghost.

Tony shrugged. “I wouldn’t have told anyone that. How could I? Imagine me telling Pepper: yes, I could have gotten in the Humvee with Rhodey. I could have been safer but I was annoyed because he lectured me on a plane about how I needed to be more responsible. I said, _I’m sorry this is the funvee, the hum-drum-vee is back there?_.” She cracked a smile (not at an entirely fond memory), “I can’t imagine you’d write it up in your report right? What was it you said to me in the desert when you found me, what was the first smart ass thing you said?”

“How was the funvee?” Rhodey said (like he really, really didn’t want to).

“Next time you ride with me,” Tony agreed. She shrugged again. 

All the aggression in his body language shifted, it melted by degrees until he was relaxed (at ease) just looking at her with wonder that couldn’t be faked. (And certainly not by Rhodey who lied about training missions on TV with authority but if you knew the tells, you knew when it was a lie.) “You’re really Tony.”

“Yes.”

Rhodey let out a breath like deflating and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. He looked over at the half-built suit (at least a new prototype for the propulsion system) and then back at her. “This isn’t going to reassure Steve that you’re not planning on causing trouble.”

Tony smiled. “I think better when I’m busy. It’s the Mark 42, he left a lot of notes on how to make it better and I have nothing else to work on.” She spun in the chair just far enough she was looking at it. “It’s an interesting idea. Nice to have in a pinch but I don’t think it would stand up to a long fight, or one that was—” How to put it? “Dirty?”

Rhodey was nodding along. “My Tony didn’t tell me who his father was until after we had sex.”

“That’s probably because he had that luxury. Howard made very certain that any guys with ideas about putting their hands on me knew it was a bad idea. Every incoming class of freshman was educated on the matter by the older classman. Don’t touch her. Her dad will kill you.” Tony shrugged.

“That sounds like him,” Rhodey agreed. “So, Howard? You didn’t get along?”

“No,” Tony said.

Rhodey nodded again. “I saw him use this one,” Rhodey said as he motioned at the bits and pieces laid out on the work table. “What kind of notes did he leave?”

“I don’t know that he’d like me to tell you that,” Tony said. She was smiling cheekily. “I had to prove who I was and that I was friendly, I have no reassurance that you’re not going to run straight back to Steven and tell him everything you found out here.”

“Tony’s my friend,” Rhodey said. “I outrank Steve. I don’t have to tell him anything I don’t feel is necessary.”

Tony laughed at that. She unfolded her legs and pushed herself up to her feet. “Come on,” she said. “I could use a second set of eyes anyway.”

# B SIDE

(This wasn’t real. No matter how real the pieces felt, it did not make a whole. Steve could feel the real world, just beyond his skin, the constant vibrating static of almost heard and almost felt and almost seen things.)

The best conversations were had in bathtubs. Steve Rogers hadn’t ever considered himself overly fond of a tub of water but there he was, soaking up the heat and the scent of the water. The bubbles were giggles against his skin with his eyes closed and her body leaning against his. Her voice was a constant (always a constant) as her hands slid up his arms. 

She said, “what is Captain America most afraid of?”

(No that wasn’t his wife, that was Baron Strucker, in a castle, in Sokovia. Those were an echo of words that she hadn’t ever said in that order. Because Tony didn’t call him _Captain America_ in bath tubs.)

Her skin was smooth as silk under his palms, her body arched into his touch as he started at her belly and slid his hands up. He’d memorized every little part of her body, his palms knew the way, his fingers knew all the best detours. With his eyes closed he could think of anything at all, things like: 

_War_. The quick-quick words of a man on his knees, the way his forehead dimpled under the pressure of the barrel of a gun. There was a line of others just like him, on their knees with their bare palms up like white fucking flags. All their words ran together, all of them speaking at once, the whole field was covered in them. He couldn’t make sense of the shape of their words but he could have recognized the rhythm anywhere. They were praying; they were _begging_. There was Steve with his trusty shield and a gun that hadn’t been used since nineteen-forty-five. War-was-war was hell and who was he to do any less than any other man. When he pulled the trigger the soldiers skull split like a melon. 

“I don’t know if I can be afraid of anything,” Steve said when his hands had gone down instead of up. His palms were rough along the inside of her thighs. His fingers dug in just enough to pull her legs up to rest them over the sides of the tub. “I think men are afraid of things they don’t understand, things they don’t think they can survive.”

 _Death_. It was meant to be mercy, putting Bucky down the way you put down a feral dog. There was no satisfaction in doing a job that had to be done. There was nothing good to feel when it was your best friend, standing there without crying, without fighting, without flinching. There was nothing-at-all decent about it but some things just had to be done, like Bucky nodding his head. Just like we talked about, just like we promised. Maybe Steve could have used a gun, but Bucky was _special_ was _unique_ , was _important_ and he deserved something more personal than a bullet to the brain. “Close your eyes,” Steve said. It was his hands and it was his arms and it was Bucky’s neck that snapped with just the right pressure.

“Aren’t you afraid of something?” Tony asked. Her hands were gripped around his wrists, pulling his hands up. “Even superheroes have fears.”

 _Anger_ , he’d woken up with it. Like a beast in his chest that vomited venom into his brain. He’d woke up filled to the gills with spite. This wasn’t-his-world. This wasn’t-what-he’d _died_ for. This world, this filthy little mudball, was a mockery of the one he’d left behind sixty-six-years-ago. Things moved, things felt, things _smelled_ different. It was just enough of the same to drive a man insane. The building on the corner was the same but the woman that had _always_ lived there had died sixty-four years ago and it was a coffee shop now. There was a gym where a deli had been and a highway that had taken over grass. Peggy was older than either of his parents ever lived to be, older than his grandparents had managed, older than Steve could have ever imagined being. It was Peggy who had been sharp and strong and beautiful, slowly succumbing to the inevitable grasp of death. Her smile as she glanced at him, her furrowed brow as she glanced around the room, searching-for-anything that felt similar to her. He was only a fragment of a memory that she couldn’t always remember. 

Steve had _died_ for this; for men to keep making the same _fucking_ mistakes. 

“I think there is one thing I’m afraid of.” His hands were sliding up her body, the tips of his fingers skirting around the metal edges of the arc reactor. Her body vibrated when she hummed a curious noise. “Erskine chose me because I was a good man,” was how is hands flattened against her breasts, the little hiss of pain she made because the grip was too tight, “the serum amplifies everything that’s already a part of you.” Her fingers were digging into the backs of his hands. “I’ve seen what power does to men. Erskine said, a weak man knows the value of compassion,” his fingertips crawled farther up as her hands tried to pull his down. “I was weak once. I stood and let them hit me, I always tried to fight back and I never won.” Her collarbones felt fragile under his touch. “I _like_ winning,” was the soft skin of her neck.

It was the way her voice gasped, “ _Steve_.” The water splashed as her feet kicked against the tub. Her body was twisting, her nails were digging into his skin. But her throat, her throat fit perfectly into the palm of his hand. Her neck was delicate in his grasp. 

“I’m afraid I’ll live so long I’ll forget what it was like to be weak. I’m afraid,” as her body thrashed, as the water cascaded over the edges of the tub, “I’ve already forgotten.”

(“Tony!” felt like _reality_ but who was he to judge anymore. The world that had been black before was full of too-bright-colors, surrounded by familiar-and-unknown faces. There was Thor (but was it?) at his side with both hands pushing his shoulders back. Steve was on his back, was fighting, was kicking and punching to get _up_.

It sounded like, must have been, Natasha leaning over him saying, “Tony’s fine, Steve. Everyone is fine. We’re just taking you home.”

But Tony _wasn’t_ fine. Tony was _gone_ ; Tony was _lost_ in a world where they weren’t _friends_. Steve struggled but Thor didn’t relent. “Be still,” was the voice of a demi-god and a prince, the sound of a man that took on the Hulk with nothing but his bare fists, hardly working up a decent impression of effort. “Whatever the witch has shown you, it is not real.”

But it _felt_ real. At very least, the only sort of real that mattered.)

# A SIDE

It was funny (but it wasn’t) how sometimes he couldn’t remember the names of all the chorus girls he’d toured with. He knew there had been a Betty and probably a Jane, and once in a while he thought there was definitely a Myrtle or a Bertie. (It was almost certain there was a Mary or a Martha, there was always a Mary or Martha, always.) But the memory got lost behind a series of grainy newsreel playing the greatest hits of his life. He remembered war: gun metal and tank shells. He remembered Peggy in every-living-detail, like a phantom that made his whole body ache for the things he wanted-and-didn’t-have. 

(Or didn’t want? What difference did it make whether or not he wanted it when he couldn’t have it. It was safest not to want; nobody could take something he was willing to give.)

No, he didn’t remember their names, and their faces had gone blurry in his memory. He barely remembered his own Mother so it was no surprise at all a line of same-ish women with harmonized voices didn’t stand out. They were cardboard cut outs in his memory but that fucking song snuck up on him now and again. He found himself humming the words in the kitchen when he was just trying to make a decent lunch.

Star spangled man with a plan, that’s what they called him. "Each one you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun." 

Steve had a plan, three or four days ago, about putting together a team that was more than a group of people brought together by circumstance (and Fury, who had a dream that had almost been a reality). It had been a good idea three-ish days ago, a good _plan_. It had felt _necessary_ and _worthwhile_ when he was working off the high of defeating Ultron and the guilt of thousands of people who had lost _everything_. 

There was no plan now; no victory high. There was only the counter he was leaning against and the woman on the television repeating exactly what had-already-been-said. 

“The reports from humanitarian efforts on the ground are, frankly, harrowing. There’s been a lot of talk of how something like this could have happened, how something of this scale could be done with no warning and how the Avengers knew to respond. Those are important questions that need an answer but, before we get into that debate, I think it’s important to think of the survivors, the thousands—tens of thousands of people that are living in destitution, that are scavenging the edges of a crater that used to be their home. 

“We have footage, I think—can we show—”

They had footage, of course they did, because the clean, pretty lady on the news was the face of a company that could take the time to send people with cameras to capture suffering but didn’t bother to bring anything useful along for the trip. Steve had seen the footage, the streets that had survived line with people sitting and blinking. The dirt that was still coming from everywhere, whipped up by the wind. 

“I thought you didn’t like watching the news,” Natasha said. He hadn’t heard her enter the room (and he rarely did) before she was just there behind his left side looking up at the TV with half the interest. 

“Where’d you hear that?” he asked.

Her eyebrows seemed indicate that it was a commonly known fact that Steve didn’t believe in dwelling on unchangeable things. Time travel hadn’t been invented yet; there was no way to go back and stop Sokovia from being destroyed, no way to save the people or homes or land that had been lost. “It’s a mess,” she said rather than name a source. “You should see channel 4, they’ve got an expert comparing key pieces of the recovered tech to Iron Man.”

Steve sighed, looked back up at the screen—at the newscaster in nice clean clothes standing like a direct contrast just to heighten the horror. “Do they have any proof?” 

“Things like this don’t need proof,” Natasha said. “What are we going to do?”

“What can we do?” Steve asked. He had been the front man of a national campaign, standing in front of a singing line up of pretty girls in flirty skirts, convincing every man and woman left at home that the best-bet they had was buying bonds to save lives. He had been propaganda. He had been a tool that men who understood how to use the media wielded to get the results they wanted. But it had only been his face, and their script, saying what he was told. “You think we should tell them it was Stark?”

Natasha shrugged, ran her fingers across a spot on the countertop behind him as she ran her tongue across her lips. (He just couldn’t ever tell with her, exactly how much of it was honest and exactly how much of it was calculated.) When she looked up at him, she seemed _sincere_ , she said, “Tony didn’t make Ultron by himself. He didn’t mean for it to—”

“Does it matter?”

“Intentions should matter,” Natasha countered. “He was trying to protect—”

“He was _reacting_ , he wasn’t _thinking_.”

“That wasn’t entirely his fault was it?” Natasha asked.

Steve hit the remote for the TV, muted the sound because the last thing this conversation needed was the sound track of tragedy. “Tony made a choice, we don’t get to pick and choose which of our choices we take responsibility for.”

“Bruce made that same choice.”

“ _Bruce_ actually _cared_.” Tony motioned upward, at a tower that wasn’t even in the way his hand moved (but behind them) and Natasha shifted on her feet in a way that suggested she was only getting started. “Why do you care?” he asked rather than start in (again). “I didn’t realize you even liked Stark.”

“I don’t _not_ like Tony,” Natasha said. 

Steve drew a breath in and let it out again. His hands found their way to his waist (and why not after what felt like half a lifetime of posing that way) so his elbows were pointing out at the sides and he was looking at the spotless ceiling because it wasn’t looking at him like it wasn’t going to quit until it got what it wanted. “Tony didn’t trust us enough to tell us his plan,” Steve said (at last), and he looked at her. “Either he thinks we’re not smart enough to understand or he thought we’d try to stop him. If it’s because we’re stupid next to him, that’s the kind of arrogance that gets people killed. If it’s because he knew we wouldn’t agree—” Steve lifted his hand and let it drop, he shrugged. There was no end to the sentence because he’d been doing his level-best not to think-too-hard-about-that. About how a man as smart as Tony had gotten taken in by a nightmare. “I thought we were getting somewhere, I thought we were becoming a team. I find out, half the people on the team still don’t trust each other.”

Natasha considered that. “Did you trust Tony?”

“I wanted to,” Steve said. He didn’t even need her to say a thing, didn’t need the way she looked at him with one eyebrow almost lifting. He _understood_ the slippery ground he was standing on because Tony-built-a-monster (as accidentally as you could. By striking a match in a room full of gasoline and acting surprised it caught on fire) but Steve was lying through his teeth. Every time he looked at Tony, there was a part of his head filled up with thinking _your parents were murdered_ and all things considered, Steve _knowing_ and never _saying_ what happened to Howard felt as untrustworthy as Tony hiding Ultron.

Maybe Steve never wanted to fucking know, or see, or live with the reality of his best-friends-hands around Tony’s Mother’s neck but it was in his head now, a grainy little film that replayed sometimes when he tried to sleep. No good came from telling Tony; it would become a disaster. 

So, it came down to intentions: Steve was trying to protect (who, himself?) Tony, and Tony was trying to protect the world. Everything was even and none of them were without blame.

“Steve,” Natasha said with one of her hands reaching out to touch his arm. “If we do nothing about Sokovia, the world will make up its own mind. We might not like what it decides. We don’t have to like Tony, or agree with Tony, but are we really willing to sit back and let them decide this was all on him?”

Steve looked over his shoulder, at the aerial shot of the crater with the web addresses for charities playing across the bottom on endless repeat. No. Good, bad, or even they won together or they lost together. If it was Tony’s fault, it was their fault and that was their disaster taking up all the space on the TV screen. It was only, Steve had _no idea_ what to do about it. “What would we do?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Natasha said. “This isn’t my specialty. If I do my job right, nobody knows I was ever there. This is—,” she motioned at the screen, “I don’t know what to do. But it feels like we _have_ to do something.”

Yes, it did. It was just a matter of figuring out _what_.

# B SIDE

“So,” was how Happy introduced himself from the front seat of the car waiting outside Tony’s front door. “You’re her. I mean, you’re a him, obviously a him, but you’re supposed to be her?” It was charming in the way many of the things Happy had ever said to him were simply charming. 

“Yes,” Tony agreed. He leaned forward so he was halfway into the front seat. “I’d love to discuss the particulars but I’m hoping to catch a plane. On time,” he added. “For the first time.” In his entire life, probably. 

Happy had almost smiled at that.

“Pepper did explain, Steve is in trouble, I need to get to New York?”

That didn’t propel Happy into instant motion but he nodded. “Pepper explained,” he agreed. Then he put the car into drive (at last) and said, “you should sit back, sir.” 

Happy had been on the plane ride too, looking at him over the top of a magazine he couldn’t even convincingly fake reading. That was fine when Tony had been fake reviewing information about how to get back home. That’s what he’d said when they got on the plane. (“I’m going to need quiet because I need to think and when I need to think, I need quiet.”) He was reviewing the satellite images of the castle, watching in real time as NATO came to finish mopping up the mess they’d left behind. The soldiers that had defended the Hydra base were in various stages of death, injury or surrender but the castle was standing.

Pietro wouldn’t have left Wanda behind to get captured, they had escaped (no doubt about that). There was just no telling where they had gone or where they would surface again. It was a problem, a useful and worthwhile problem that needed solving, but it wasn’t as pressing, as important as the castle that was still standing.

That castle with its hidden cache of his tech and Chitauri weapons. 

Halfway to New York, Happy had given up the pretense to say, “so, you’re dating Pepper where you’re from?”

No part of him had the patience or the calm to answer that question one more time. He dragged himself away from infrared scans to glare at Happy and found the man sitting across the plane from him with his chest puffed out like an over-proud turkey. He was _defensive_ in an _offensive_ way, clearly on the verge of offering up some threat or another he couldn’t possibly maintain. (Wasn’t that interesting, wasn’t that just terribly interesting.) “Is that important?” he asked.

“I just don’t think she’d be interested in a man like you,” was as casual as Steve Rogers two days ago saying _I don’t want you dating anyone_. 

“Huh,” Tony said.

“What?”

“I’m happy for you, Happy,” he said. (Wasn’t that funny, how convincing that was. How he even believed it himself.) “You and Pepper?”

Happy was pink-cheeked-and-pleased. No threats were forthcoming because he was caught in a sudden fit of modesty, trying to look like he hadn’t been exactly trying to say as much. “Well, we’re just testing the waters,” required him to make a general motion with his hands, “we’ve gone out a few times—as friends, but I hope, I _think_ it’s starting to really be something.”

(It was something, there was no denying that.) Tony nodded. “Pepper’s a very special woman,” he said.

“Yes, she is,” Happy agreed. “So are you,” seemed automatic, as if someone had once told Happy never to compliment one woman and not another. So automatic that he didn’t even realize he’d said it, until he did and he was tripping over himself to take it back with: “I mean the real you, the other you—the one that is usually here. Not that you’re a woman. I don’t think you’re a woman.”

“Happy,” Tony said. Just to stop the noise. “It’s okay. I know what you meant.” 

“Good,” was a nice place to end the conversation. “Good. Good.”

The rest of the plane ride was a void of sound (and information). He didn’t know what the Avengers had access to, what connections they’d made, what friends in what countries that owed favors. (Or if they’d let Tony use those favors, if he could convince them the whole interior of the castle needed to be wiped out, that Wanda needed to be found, that—)

He hadn’t found any answers or any worthwhile ideas in the time between stepping off the plane and stepping into the elevator at Avenger’s tower. “The elevator needs your authorization to go to the Avengers’ operations floor,” Happy prompted.

“Right, Jarvis?” Tony said. He shoved his fists into his pants pockets and reminded himself (again, again) that Steve-was-fine because Steve had always been fine, always walked it off, always emerged no worse for the wear. Steve was made of pure patriotism and righteousness. There was no handhold in his head for Wanda to get at, so Steve would be _fine_. 

Tony was good at talking himself into things like that; at convincing himself the sky wasn’t going to fall (but he’d seen it more than once, hurtling straight for the planet). The elevator doors opened to a hum of noise. There was Maria Hill looking over her shoulder at him, looking instantly unimpressed (but then again, he didn’t seem to impress her regardless of the universe he was in). 

“Happy?” Maria said.

“Oh, this is,” Happy looked Tony up and down, squishing his mouth up in an effort to form words that didn’t seem like they were going to happen (any time soon) as he pointed a finger and cycled through a dozen excuses. 

“Tony,” he said at last. 

“Tony,” Maria repeated. The information didn’t strike her as utterly ridiculous, “Stark?” That question seemed to be directed primarily to Happy who answered it with a shrug and a nod, one of which seemed enough to contradict the other. 

“One of the only two,” Tony assured her.

Maria had not been born with a sense of humor (as far as he could tell) so she just sighed at him instead. “Well, this is one more complication I didn’t need. The team is on its way in, we were lucky Dr. Cho was still here. She’s due to fly back to Seoul tonight.”

“That’s it?” Tony asked. “Any man can,” he motioned back at the elevator, “walk in off the street and claim to be me and you just—what, accept? No questions, no tests? No prove it by doing something only Tony would do?”

Maria shifted how she was holding the tablet so she could level him with the full strength of her disdain. “Steve already told me. He thought you might end up here if the mission didn’t go smoothly. He also said you’d have to travel with Happy or Pepper,” she motioned at his body guard, “and that Jarvis would recognize you.” She shifted on her feet so they could both see the screen behind her, the movement of many bodies on the ground. In the distance was the sound of phones and rapid talking, the general noise of situations being contained. “I have bigger concerns.”

There was no reason to respond to that. “What do we know about Cap?”

“He got hit by one of the Maximoff twins,” Tony didn’t spend too much time in his own universe figuring out how Maria Hill had known about Wanda and Pietro, because it was classified in a different section of the Avenger’s machine than he generally got involved with. He must have thought, might have thought, that maybe she had kept in touch with Fury. Fury was _the_ spy, the original, the best, the one that still had fingers in every single pie in the world. There was nothing Maria wouldn’t know if she wanted to know. “He’s agitated, Thor’s been keeping him calm.”

“What, with Asgardian lullabies?”

Maria couldn’t have been less impressed with him, “he’s in bad shape. He keeps going in and out of what appears to be a nightmare. He’s _agitated_. I doubt there’s a lot of singing happening.” (No, there was probably a great deal of restraining. Perhaps a bit of manhandling but not a great deal of singing.) But she sighed, “look, we appreciate whatever intelligence you have on Wanda Maximoff and her abilities but,” and it seemed to pain her to say it, “you’re not cleared as a member of the team. Consider yourself an outside contractor.”

“So, I’m good enough to be a consultant but not a team member?” (This had happened once before, with this woman and the man she was _still_ working for.) “Didn’t I build this?” he motioned at the room around them, “hire you? Don’t I pay for all this,” he motioned his hand at the screens and phones and employees that were visible but indistinguishable in the distance. “I can be the bank and a consultant but I can’t be a member of the team?”

“ _She_ built this,” Maria corrected (with extra emphasis on the world), “and _she_ is the boss. And _her_ rules are no member is added to the team without the unanimous approval of the team and never before they’ve been assessed.” But the stiff-backed-policy broke with a sigh at the sound of the jet approaching. “Look,” was softer, friendlier, “whatever you know that can help us? Whatever you can do to help Steve? We need that. If you’re still here next week, we’ll talk about your place on the team.”

(Put more concisely: he didn’t have one.)

“Fine,” Tony said. “I want to see Steve first.”

“As soon as they get him in a room,” Maria agreed.

“Oh,” Tony said as he snapped his fingers, as Happy gently motioned him away from her. “Things might be different here, but if I— _she_ is paying the bills, do us both a favor and sweep the castle for stolen Stark tech?”

Maria nodded her head when it looked like she wanted to roll her eyes. Tony went where Happy motioned and found himself in a very nice conference room looking at a cart that boasted a dozen bottles of water and tray of cookie crumbs. He stood there with his hands in his pockets and his ears ringing. 

_Agitated_ , she said. Steve was _agitated_. (Sometimes, Bruce got _agitated_ too. Only there was no room, and nobody that could keep him calm.)

# A SIDE

When they were new at making friends, Steve had slowly and methodically developed a single look to convey _am I really supposed to believe there’s a reason that you’re doing what you are doing at this exact moment_ that had aimed for subtle but become so universally recognizable that Clint had started referring to it as the ‘Tony look’. It had started with her habit of climbing onto counters, or desks, or up two more steps than Steve. She also hovered off the ground in the Iron Man suit. 

Steve who was raised in a time and place where women were demure (and one assumed, sat in chairs as one expected) had _finally_ broken under the constant stress of trying to accept the idea that Tony had a reason for standing on counters and said, _there’s a floor_ as if the concept had escaped her attention.

Sitting on the island counter in the kitchen, eating the fries that Rhodey had just brought back from Burger King (an important addition to any worthwhile diet), she smiled over the sheer _exasperation_ that Steve could convey with the right tilt of his eyebrows. “What is he doing about this?” 

Rhodey looked up at the TV, at the evening coverage of the Sokovia disaster. There was a man in an ugly suit jacket and square glasses that considered himself an expert in the field of robotics, he wasn’t _suggesting_ that there was a massive conspiracy to cover up Stark tech that had gone rogue but there were certainly similarities in the robot parts recovered from the disaster site and other pieces of the Iron Legion that had been found in the past. 

There was, according to this man, a very particular metal bolt used in both cases. A metal bolt that was infrequently used in any other device. (Which meant he had no proof and therefore any words that sounded like proof would work in their place.)

“I don’t know,” Rhodey said. He stood by the island, opening single serve packs of ketchup to dip the fries in rather than watching the news. 

“Do the Avengers have PR in this world?”

Rhodey snorted, “do you have PR in your world?”

Her mouth was full of partially masticated potato so she couldn’t immediately answer. The best she managed was a scoff that became a cough and then another one. Rhodey handed her the drink she ordered and politely covered his fries with a napkin until she was through. “We’re,” was strained through her cough-raw throat, “an American based vigilante group that regularly invades other countries to stop super villains. One of our members is a giant green rage monster. One is a flying demi-god who shoots lightning. Steve dresses up as an American flag and has never seen a glass window he didn’t want to get thrown out of. Of course we have PR. We also have working relationships with the governments of several countries including this one. This tower,” Tony said as she motioned at the ground beneath them, “is filled up with people that make sure we’re not viewed as international criminals.” She motioned at the screen.

“I only became an Avenger a week ago,” Rhodey said.

“Do you still work for the US Government?” Tony asked. She dipped her fry into his ketchup and smiled when he frowned at her. Rather than point out that it was rude to take someone else’s condiments he just pulled out more ketchup and made a second puddle.  
`  
“If I’m needed,” Rhodey said.

“You did enough of this BS,” Tony said motioning up at the screen, “covering up things the world was more comfortable not knowing. You’ve been the man in front of the camera trying to talk down the conspiracy theorists,” like the bolt man with square glasses, “you know how this ends.”

Rhodey sighed. “It’s not my call.”

“That’s a cop out,” she said. “You hear that man on the screen? That’s my name, that’s _his_ name they’re throwing around. If we don’t get out there, if we don’t get involved, this is going to get ugly and it’ll get ugly fast.”

Rhodey was staring at his fries, gritting his teeth, probably thinking he _hated_ it when Tony developed maturity and responsibility. It threw off the dynamic of their friendship, it undermined the wisdom that Rhodey had from years-and-years of service. Tony didn’t have a service history (or a responsible history) but she had a lifetime of experience of watching the media turn. “I’ll talk to him,” was what Rhodey finally said. He even looked up at her when he said it, his hands smoothed against the countertop. “You need to stop antagonizing him. You need to give him something, show that you’re cooperating, that you can be trusted.”

The only thing she wanted to give Steven Grant Rogers was her fist delivered straight to his face. “It’s not my access that gets taken away,” she said, “it’s your Tony’s. Look me in the eye and tell me you believe, you really one-hundred-percent believe, that Steven would give your Tony back access when he returned and I’ll do it.” 

But Rhodey couldn’t. Even if every muscle in his jaw was straining to unhinge and form the words, he was an honest man and a good friend. “Then give something else,” Rhodey said. 

Tony sighed. “I’ll think about it.” She picked up the remote from the countertop and flipped the channel over to the game show channel. It was the exact right time for Jeopardy, the opening notes had barely had time to play before Rhodey groaned. 

“No,” he said. “No, change the channel or I’m leaving.”

“I’ll give you a head start,” she said. “You’re a college educated man, there’s no reason you couldn’t win.”

“No,” Rhodey said again. She was laughing when she handed over the remote. (And that was nice, to find a friendly face, here in this ugly world.)

# B SIDE

Steve recognized the room; he’d been in and out of it enough times to know exactly where he was. He knew how thick these walls were, how closely monitored it was, and exactly how many different methods of neutralizing a threat were hidden inside of it. 

That was what he’d become: a threat.

(Right then, with reality vibrating like a guitar string, it felt appropriate. It felt _right_. Steve-was-a-threat; was a much larger and more grave threat than he was given credit for.) 

His head didn’t _hurt_ but it felt immense, as if nightmares were cotton could be stuffed in through his ears. He’d only just pulled himself into the chair bolted to the floor, only just managed that before his body had folded forward. His hand was covering his eyes as the echoes of nightmares went parading like pink elephants through his brain. 

Everything else was filtering through, the air recycling through the vents, the whirr and tick of the cameras watching him, the muffled voice of men in the hall and the cool breeze on his arms. His bare arms. They’d stripped him out of most of the uniform, left him wearing his undershirt and his pants. His free hand clenched against the inside of his leg.

This was (necessary) humiliating. To be treated like a threat, to be stripped and locked in.

The door opened, Steve lifted his head away from his hand. There was Tony (not his Tony) with a nice button him plaid shirt and a regretful look. “You look like shit,” he said. There was no pity in his regret; just a tired, aging anger. Tony walked close enough to hand him the shirt, to stare at his face like he was looking for some kind of answer in it. “You’re stupid,” wasn’t what he expected to hear. Tony’s hands were slipping into his pants pockets, his shoulders lifted up and dropped again. “No matter what universe you’re in, you’re stupid. Star spangled man with a plan?” was just _dripping_ with disdain, “it doesn’t have to be a good plan.”

Steve sat up straight enough to get his arms into the shirt (and winced at the pull of bruises he didn’t remember getting in his shoulders) but he didn’t waste the energy to button it. “I had a plan,” Steve said. (His head felt immense, his feet were cold, his memory was full of nightmares.) “It was a good plan. Sometimes, even good plans don’t work. That’s why we have contingencies.”

Tony hovered just beyond reach, looking at him like he was trying to accept that as fact. (That was almost refreshing, the real Tony didn’t believe him when he said it either.) “What did she show you?” Tony asked. 

Steve leaned back into the chair, pulled at the bottom of the shirt and stared at Tony’s shiny shoes. He was looking for, failing to find, the words that could wrap up the whole of it. “She showed me,” was the easiest place to start, “something I—something I didn’t even realize I was afraid of,” Steve looked up at Tony’s face. “You’ve met her?”

Tony nodded.

“What did she show you?” Steve asked.

“The bodies of the people I couldn’t protect,” Tony motioned around the room, at him, at the Avengers, maybe at the whole world, “you,” was very specific, “ _dead_.”

Steve drew in a breath, “I killed all of them. That’s what she showed me, that I’ll live long enough to forget who I am. That I’ll become a monster.” He (felt a bit like crying) ran his hands down his legs and shook his head. “I killed her, with my hands, I killed her.”

“She’s not dead, Cap,” Tony said. “What Wanda shows you isn’t real.”

Steve shrugged. “Does it matter? It felt real.” There was no describing the look on Tony’s face then, the anger and the sadness that got all mixed up. It was half-hidden in a scowl and a careless sideways glance, and Tony’s hand pulled out of his pocket to look at his wrist but he wasn’t wearing a watch. “It’s jumbled up,” Steve said, “I know it’s not real. It feels real.”

Tony nodded. “What happens now?” 

“It’s not up to me,” Steve said. “I can’t make this call—whatever they decide, that’s what we do.” 

They’d already made the call when they put him in a containment cell, when they’d taken his shoes and socks and left him in a room full of traps. The call was caution (of course it was) and somewhere beyond the closed door, Maria, Natasha, Thor and Clint were rifling through the back up files, looking for another man to call in to fill the empty space on the roster. (It would be Sam. It had to be Sam.) 

Tony was nodding, “I’ll just go—check, I guess, on how that’s going.” It was a good excuse to leave. Steve didn’t blame him. The room was unnerving (and meant to be, in its own way). “It’ll be okay, Cap,” Tony said when the door opened. “You always get up. This will be okay.”

Just, for a second, there was no telling which one of them Tony was trying to convince.


	6. Chapter 6

# B SIDE

Tony just needed a minute. One minute away from the room with no windows. One minute away from the noise of the tower full of people working-working-working like buzzing bees in a hive. One minute away from the reality of history (not) repeating itself. One minute alone in a place full to the brim of concerned faces and hurried voices looking for solutions to a problem they didn’t even fully understand yet.

A minute away from Steve on a chair bolted to the ground, sitting with his body hunched forward and his bare feet flat on the floor. 

Just a minute, in a room with chairs on wheels and windows that spanned the entire length. A minute to look out at New York still picking up the pieces of The Event. A minute to cover his face with his hands and listen to the in and out of his own breath, to feel how warm it was against his skin, to feel the bristle of his hardly-shaved face. Just a single minute to find a handhold, a tiny shred of reality in the sudden spiral of disjointed reality that surrounded him. 

“Things are bad where you came from, aren’t they?” That was Natasha, as close to his elbow as his breath was to his face. She wasn’t touching him, or trying to, but taking up an authoritative space just beyond his right elbow. Her eyes were trained forward, at the dim reflection on the glass and the unworried world beneath them. The sky had gone dark and the streets were glowing with light. 

“They aren’t always great,” Tony said. He tucked his hands into his pants pockets where his fingers wouldn’t fidget too much. 

“You have a real gift for understatement,” was a smile on her face as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Her lips were pulled up in a genuine smile.

Tony shrugged. He pulled his hand free to point at her, gently (without accusation), “are you the current leader of the Avengers? Since Cap is in a time out and I—she, is out the service area?”

“You don’t think I should be?” (Was there a polite way to say that he didn’t trust her, that where he came from she had a habit of undermining any man’s ability to trust her, that she was a spy first-and-foremost and a team member second? Was there a polite way of saying he was ninety percent sure she’d always save his life but that ten percent felt like a hundred when it was your life on the line.) “I’m not,” conceded that Tony (who hadn’t spoken a single word) may not be entirely wrong. “There are protocols to follow. When our field leader is compromised, we return to base. We consult with the team leader, when the team leader is compromised, we make choices by unanimous consent.”

“Steve is the—?”

“Field leader,” Natasha said.

Which implied that the Tony Stark who was missing from this scene was the team leader. (Wasn’t that funny?) He scratched at the overgrowth of hair on his cheek, “what is your unanimous decision?”

“Our unanimous concern is Steve,” Natasha said. (Because there were no decisions being made at present.) Barton was being _repaired_. Bruce was groggy with recovery. Thor was around but if he was anything like the Thor that Tony knew, he had one foot out of the door on his way back to Asgard. That was good, the scepter needed to be removed from the face of the planet. It needed to go back to the world beyond theirs where it could call down chaos on another planet that wasn’t expecting it. “We haven’t decided what to do about it yet.” She looked at him with _expectation_ as if he should know what it was she wanted to hear from him, what she was implying with her eyebrows and her casual authority. Natasha was dressed up as Black Widow, armed to the teeth in a skin-tight suit, and it was hard to separate the physical danger she posed with the almost soft way she looked at him.

“Throw me a bone?” he said.

Natasha turned, like she was going to touch him and didn’t. “We won’t discuss Sokovia or our next move until the morning. Steve,” she motioned back toward the room with no windows, “can’t leave that room for twenty-four hours. _Active_ members of the Avengers cannot go into the room with him.”

_Oh_. Tony nodded. 

“You knew about these enhanced the—”

“Maximoff twins,” Tony filled in. “I know them.” (Only _they_ had been swiftly reduced to _her_.) “Steve and I aren’t friends where I’m from, and I don’t dislike the guy. And he—” Tony motioned back toward the room, “seems like a great guy but this isn’t my field, this isn’t what I do. I can’t—”

“My field is asset acquisition and management,” Natasha cut in.

“Interrogation, assassination,” Tony added.

Natasha cocked her eyebrow up at him. Her hands were resting gently on her hips as she stared at him (in the way that Pepper did, in the way that said _be quiet_ in this world but _shut up, Tony_ in his). “My field requires me to rapidly identify motivation so I can use it to make the subject do what I want.”

“I’m aware,” Tony assured her. (He’d been one of those subjects once, the unknowing animal that was being studied for suitability.) 

“You know what it’s like to be afraid of your own mind,” Natasha said. The words were softer than any he’d ever heard her speak. (Even when she was pretending to be from accounting. Even when she was acting as weak as a newborn.) Her head tipped as she looked at him. The intensity of the stare made him shift back on his feet, he opened his mouth to deny it (or play it off, or make it less _true_ ) and she added, “I would appreciate your help, Tony.” 

(And she was good. She was very, very _good_.)

# A SIDE

Privacy was not something Steve had ample opportunity to enjoy. There was no privacy in the Avenger’s compound, there was only selective ignorance that allowed him the pretense of not being monitored and recorded every minute of the day. Still, there was peace of mind in that ignorance. The sensation of privacy that one got from four walls and a closed door. 

But there was also Vision, a six-foot-three-inch infant. Vision’s lifespan was still being measured in days. (Twenty nine of them, to be precise, just after midnight.) Even as supernaturally intelligent and gifted as he was, basic concepts seemed to escape him. Nobody could fault him, if walls were no obstacle, treating them as such must have seemed absurd. “Captain Rogers,” interrupted all the peace of mind Steve had been cultivating (in his room, with his door closed). His body was halfway through the wall, his legs still stuck in the bookcases as he looked expectantly across the room with every expectation to be indulged. Maybe Steve looked annoyed or maybe the concept of boundaries and barriers had just occurred to Vision, but either way, he said, “ah, yes. The door. I apologize.” He leaned backward and other than the rattle of a cup on top of one of the bookcases, there was no evidence he’d ever been there.

Steve dropped the pencil he’d been holding (thinking, but failing, about coming up with a plan). He turned in his chair with a sigh almost perfectly timed with Vision knocking on his door. There was nobody but cameras to see him raise his hand to motion at the pointlessness of it before he rubbed at the phantom of a growing pain in his face (like a headache, trying and failing to form) before he said, “come in.”

And Vision, still struggling with these ideas of solid matter, phased through the door rather than open it. He stood just on the inside, looking very much like an old man (and Steve would know, as he was the oldest man currently living here) attempting to figure out which expression conveyed repentance. “I had a thought,” Vision announced. (Only a man who was once a computer program, a hunk of rare metal and a shimmery alien stone could _announce_ every sentence any other man would simply say.) 

“An important thought?” Steve asked. He glanced at the clock on his desk (11:34 PM) but Vision looked confused. (Time was also a difficult concept for newborns to grasp.) “What’s your thought?”

Vision rubbed his fist into the palm of his other hand, glanced around to find something he could sit on and discovered there was nothing but the bed. He visibly weighed the pros and cons of making that move and in the end remained standing while he eyed the perfectly-flat-blanket taking up space on Steve’s bed. “It is about Wanda.”

“Wanda?” Steve repeated.

“Yes,” Vision looked at his face. “And Sokovia and,” as if he were the man the man that discovered it: “guilt.” 

“Ok.”

“Emotions are,” Vision hesitated, “unquantifiable. While there seems to be a consensus on the definition of an emotion, there is no standard scale to describe the severity of that feeling or its effects on the person that is experiencing it.” (Steve had to wonder what real babies thought about, if they tried to understand the world the way Vision did. Or if it was broken down to basics: hunger, thirst, pain and how to cure each.) 

“I assume this is about Wanda?”

“Ah,” Vision said. “In a way, yes. Wanda is experiencing guilt, and sadness, and regret.” There, again, he paused. “You would rather she did not?”

Steve sighed and stood up. He flipped the sketchbook he’d bothered to open shut and shrugged. “I don’t think it matters what I would rather she feel. I’ve seen what guilt does to men; how it makes them easier to manipulate, it makes them sloppy. I can’t change the past,” (and if he could, he would have started fixing it long before Ultron destroyed Sokovia). “Wanda can’t change the choices she made.”

“Pain is essential to human’s survival,” Vision said. He held up a hand to stave off the objection. “When a child experiences pain from touching something hot, they learn that hot is bad and that it should be avoided or handled with care. If a child could not feel it was hot, it would not learn to be cautious and it would die. Guilt is a form of pain.”

“Pain isn’t always a useful teacher,” Steve said. “You can’t avoid pain. If you’re human, you’ll feel it. You don’t have to like it but you can’t stop it. _Guilt_ doesn’t prevent you from making the same mistakes again.”

Vision cocked his head to the side, narrowed his eyes and just stared at Steve for a moment. He was cataloguing the conversation away in his mental archive, setting it in place with all the other things he’d learned. (Maybe, up there, was an infinite knowledge, all the things Jarvis had known, all the things Ultron had known, all the things the Mind Stone had yet to show them.) “Do you feel guilt?”

Yes. “I try not to let guilt make my decisions for me,” Steve said. 

“Wanda is _young_ ,” Vision announced. It was a fresh bullet point in the conversation. Steve nodded. “Her youth does not mean she is not capable of making important discoveries about the meaning of life— _her_ life and the lives of the people that her choices have hurt. I feel that we would be in error if we attempted to prevent her from making these discoveries. Allowing the time for reflection and healing will make her stronger.”

There was an awkward lull in the conversation; a point between Vision finishing his sentence and Steve resting his hands on his hips. There was no question (exactly) in everything Vision had said but still the implication of admonishment. (That was a strange sensation to be gently scolded by a man who hadn’t even been alive a full thirty days ago.) “I just don’t think she deserves to take the blame for what happened in Sokovia.” He motioned sideways, back toward New York, “I think there are more important things that need my attention. Wanda is young, if she isn’t ready—”

“We all deserve blame for Sokovia,” was the perfect sentiment for a man who couldn’t be blamed. But at the same time, Vision seemed to have decided there was no point in pursuing the conversation, he nodded his head. “It is late,” was rote-recitation, “you should sleep, Captain.”

# B SIDE

No matter how he rubbed his hands, no matter how tight he balled them up, he could feel her neck across his palms. He could feel her pulse under his fingertips, the way her fingernails cut into the backs of his hands. The vivid, constant, visceral sensation of her fake death echoed across the surface of his skin. In the unchanging quiet of the room, there was nothing to distract him from it.

What was that fight they’d had on repeat, over and over, how he had found a moral high ground in refusing to use a gun that she referred to as a ‘moral pit of intentional peril exacerbated by ignorant arrogance’. Gun or no gun, Steve was no less likely to kill a man. But guns made it easy, made it as simple and pointing and squeezing a trigger. Guns were efficient, senseless, needless murderers. They had a place in the theater of war that didn’t exist _here_ in this new place and time he found himself. 

No, no— _No_. Steve killed men with his fists, with the shield, with whatever he had in arm’s reach and only ( _only_ ) when there was no alternative. There was a decent balance in that, a far cry from the boy he’d been in tights thinking there was glory in battle and honor in war. Steve hadn’t even seen half the faces of the men he’d killed in war. It had felt like a simple necessity and he’d walked it off; he’d put it out of his head, he’d reminded himself there was a line in the sand and all those on the opposite side were _wrong_. 

That was how they felt about him, how they’d felt about Bucky and Peggy and the Howling Commandos. Those men they fought had attacked with every intent to kill and there was nothing more satisfying or justified than the mad-fight for one’s life and one’s Ideals. 

This nightmare, lingering all along his body, was an echo of his past. All that was missing was a line in the sand. All that was missing was the moral pretext; the justifiable nature of lethal force in an unfair fight. Steve had killed enough men in his life that it was hardly a leap, hardly a noticeable skip, to go from battlefields to bathtubs. 

There was no skinny Brooklyn boy in his mirror anymore; no pretending that he suffered injustices and indignities. No bullies beat him up in the alley outside a theater. Nobody had to protect him anymore.

Steve didn’t need a gun. He didn’t need an ideal to protect. He just needed a battlefield and a fight. He could kill anyone.

The door opened again, hissed lowly as the locks disengaged. The floor buzzed under his bare feet as innocently as a bumblebee flying past on its way to work. Tony stepped in with a plastic platter heaped to the top with sandwiches. There were a few bottles of water balanced on the edge. (Just a typical late lunch, really.) The door swung shut, the locks turned, and Tony was staring at the floor as he shifted on his feet. 

“You’ve looked better,” Tony said. He lifted the tray slightly, “hungry?”

No. Steve shrugged. There was no table in the room. It was simpler to slide off the chair and sit with his back against the wall than it was to try to balance the tray and the mountain of sandwiches on his lap. “You don’t have to—” Steve said. He meant _stay_ or _be here_ , (maybe) _try to be her_. But his skin was vibrating with nightmares and he didn’t want to be alone even if it was a good idea. “Thank you,” was more appropriate.

Tony nodded as he crouched low enough to hand him the tray. He didn’t sit at his side, but against the next wall so their feet were nearly touching. They’d dressed him up casually, covered all the protective material they’d put on him first. The T-shirt and the jacket were convincing but Steve-knew-Natasha well enough to know she’d take _precautions_. “Whose idea,” Tony asked with a circle of his finger to indicate the whole room.

“Mine,” Steve said. He picked up a sandwich and grimaced at it. The bread was soft (of course it was) and they’d been made exactly how he liked. The proportion of meat, cheese and condiments was exactly perfect and still it looked like tree bark in his hand. “Her design, my idea.”

“Does everyone have their own suite or do we share?” 

Steve dropped the sandwich again and dusted his hands. He crossed his legs rather than leave the stretched out. “We have two rooms, this room for everyone but her, Bruce and Thor. The second room is for her.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at him.

“She still has the arc reactor. The floors,” he tapped his knuckle against them, “can be electrified in this room. I’ve been told it wouldn’t hurt the arc reactor but I’d prefer not to endanger the device keeping shrapnel out of my wife’s heart.” He shrugged, the way he’d shrugged at her two hours into her dissertation on how unnecessary a second room was. “The other room is less heavily armed, it’s more focused on preventing her from having access to any materials she could use to build— _anything_.”

“No rooms for Bruce or Thor?”

“Do you have a way to contain the Hulk or the God of Thunder?” Steve asked. “We use diplomacy with Thor. There’s Veronica for Hulk. And Bruce? There’s a fairly effective sedative if you can get to him before he changes.”

Tony wasn’t laughing but smiling, shaking his head as he rubbed his hand across the scruff growing on his face. It was funny how different his face was from hers, but how similar. How Steve could see her in every motion this man made, how her defeat was hanging in his shoulders. How her dark humor was a half-hearted chuckle in his throat. “Tell me,” was almost a hiccup, “is there anything _she_ hasn’t thought of?”

Steve tipped his head back, sorted back through the darkness. (Because she hadn’t thought of _this_ of holes in the universe, of girls with the power to control your mind, of male versions of herself that looked desperate to find something comforting.) “She doesn’t like our toaster. She tried to rebuild it but it still burns the toast.”

That made Tony laugh, like he wanted to cry, and he just shook his head and covered his face with both hands. When they dropped to his lap again, he said: “Pepper doesn’t eat toast.”

“Want a sandwich?” Steve asked. He picked one up and offered it to him. “I should eat, I just don’t like to eat alone.”

Tony hesitated and then leaned forward. He peeled the bread away from the meat and seemed to find it tolerable. “So,” Tony said rather than eat, “why didn’t you like her? Why didn’t you like me? Was it something I did? Said?”

That there, that was a question that Steve hadn’t ever actually found the best answer to. It was a constantly mutating myriad of reasons. “No,” was the only thing he knew for sure. The only absolute he’d uncovered during all the fights he’d ever had with his wife. “You look more like Howard than she does,” he conceded. “That can’t be easy to look at. We weren’t very close, Howard and I, but he was an ally and a friend. I don’t have much left from then. Peggy’s an old woman. Bucky’s—” Steve shrugged. “But taking it out on her, that was never about her. It’s not about you,” he said.

“Feels like it is,” Tony said.

“If you’re much like her, you didn’t like me either.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, “well,” was an excuse, “hard to like the only man your Father ever actually expressed love or concern for. He never liked me,” with a motion at his chest, “he was never proud—not out loud, not unless he could brag—but you, oh boy. Captain America. _Steve Rogers_. If he was still alive, the day they took you out of the ice, it would have been the happiest day of his life.”

Steve sighed. “I never wanted that.”

Tony laughed. “Me, either.” He looked down at the sandwich again and finding nothing better to say, nothing better to do, lifted it up to take a bite out of it. “Eat,” he said around a mouthful. “If I have to eat this, you do too.”

# A SIDE

When Tony thought of _fear_ she didn’t think of big-black-holes in space. It wasn’t aliens and monsters that populated her nightmares. Sitting flat on her ass in the center of Tony Stark’s fantastic safety net (the Mark 42, the suit that would never leave you, the one that would always be there when you needed it) she thought of:

A dark cave. She thought of a car battery attached to her chest. She thought of those first, horrifying moments of consciousness, when her fingers tore the bloody bandages and it had been only Yinsen in the distance, attempting to be respectful but managing nothing more than pity. 

The first moment she was lucid enough to remember the bomb, to have some awareness of the memory of the operating table. There was _fear_ in being strapped down, in being mutilated, in waking up in a cave with no windows and no opening doors. 

Fear was her face in water, the unrelenting grip of a man’s hand in her hair, the way his body curved across hers. It was the implication in the way they looked at her. It was only a matter of how useful she was willing to be, that’s how Raza looked at her. He was lowering himself to speak with her. He was bothering to hold off the hungry dogs. (And, _oh_ , how hungry his dogs were.) Raza demanded her gratitude for saving her from even-worse-fates as he held her captive and tortured her until she complied. But, (he never exactly said), better this than the alternative.

Yinsen was a soft spot in a hard memory, a kind voice that offered facts and observations when he couldn’t offer her safety or comfort. He knew, like she knew, the only way to keep her life and her body to herself was to do-what-they-asked (or something better). Yinsen knew the price of obedience, how heavy it weighed on you, how it starved you of sleep.

Here, now, in this ugly, awful world, she was staring at the tracking implants that another Tony had built to call the suit to him whenever he needed it. She was studying his notes on how well the neural interfacing worked, how he controlled the suit even when he wasn’t in it. He was searching for relief, for safety, for comfort but the things that crept out of the dark places of her head (of his head) weren’t often tamed by the machines they built.

She thought of Obidiah, thought of his dirty little device that made all the blood drain out of her muscles, how it had left her weak and mute. How long he’d leaned in against her side, how he had licked his lips when he ran his finger down her neck and chest to tap on the arc reactor. He’d been a human sweat mark against her side, lingering long after he’d revealed his plot.

The Chitauri had come to take the planet, they’d intended to leave none but slaves alive. That was upsetting as a person who planned to live (and live _free_ ) but it wasn’t _personal_ , it was _war_ as far as they were concerned. No, Tony hadn’t lost sleep worrying over the existence of things from other worlds that wanted to kill her. 

It was the nuke that pissed her off. The unknown council members that had made the choice; the ones that hadn’t had the education or the intelligence to understand that detonating a nuclear weapon wouldn’t have done _shit_ to close the hole in the sky. The warhead was the reason she’d poured money into the Avengers, the reason she’d turned the (un)friendly rivalry with Steve into something _useful_. 

“Friday,” she said. She wiped her dirty fingers on the shop rag.

“Sir?”

She looked over at the after-midnight-news, still non-stop Sokovia coverage. The ratings were good on disasters, were better on Avengers, were best on Avengers-based-disasters. Any day now, there would be a flood of celebrities hosting dinners and tele-a-thons, there would be politicians chatting about legislation and the men in Washington that made choices would start thinking to themselves what good came from protecting the Avengers that were making their life so difficult. 

Maybe this Tony never had that moment, the morning-after when she woke up to destruction on all sides. Maybe _Mr._ Stark hadn’t invited himself into Fury’s office to demand what genius had decided detonating a nuclear weapon was the best-case-scenario. Maybe _he_ hadn’t stood across a desk from Fury, hadn’t seen his face caught between the _right_ choice and the _company line_. Captain America was aligned with SHIELD, was an asset they had resurrected and protected but all Tony had to do was offer Steve a chance to make his own choices. (A chance to put his faith and his trust in a team that wasn’t in it for politics or fame or glory; the collection of girls and boys and green rage monsters that wanted to make a difference.)

Maybe this Steve had-or-had-never had that moment, that one where he stayed or he walked. It didn’t matter to her, didn’t matter at all, because as the good Captain Rogers was so fond of saying: there was simply nothing that could be done to change the past. They had to move forward.

Forward was Rhodey. Forward was understanding there was a fine line the Avengers had to walk to keep themselves on the good side of the US government. They were (mostly) US citizens, mostly useful, mostly helpful but favors had to be traded to be sure they were worth the trouble when they weren’t as useful or as prompt or as good at their job. Rhodey was one part of a whole; a true military man that understood his place in the great moving machine that was the United States Armed Forces. Rhodey had discipline, had loyalty, had _experience_. 

Friday prompted, “sir?” again like she’d forgotten.

Tony glanced over at the clock, (thought about how long ago Rhodey had left to go back to the Avenger’s compound). “Remind me to go to sleep in two hours.”

Good old Steven couldn’t leave a bad situation alone; Rhodey couldn’t work for a single man when there were ideals that needed protecting. Between the two of them, it came down to the definition of truth, justice and the American way.

# B SIDE

“Jarvis.” Tony was out of the room, down the hall, finding a corner that was big enough to lean into. There was no space (that he could see, on this floor, nearby) for a man to be alone, and barely enough for him to whisper to himself. “Remind me why I quit drinking?”

“It impairs your judgment, sir,” Jarvis said.

There was no arguing that point. Tony nodded with his back against a wall and full view of anyone that might come looking for him. That felt important (but why, when there were no enemies in this place). He was breathing through the sensation of being pushed into a space far too small. (Thinking, there had to be something decent to drink in this place.) He’d half convinced himself both into looking for the liquor and going back to the room with Steve when Bruce wandered (no better word to describe the motion) around a corner.

“Tony,” Bruce said. He looked over his shoulder, saw nothing, and then looked back him. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” No, he wasn’t. “Great. How can I help you?”

Bruce had an honest face. The sort of face that only an honest man could possibly have, kind of unassuming and not entirely attractive. He was thinking out how he wanted to phrase his question, maybe shuffling his feet on the carpet because he wasn’t sure this was the _right_ setting to talk but the impulse was greater than his caution. “You’ve been to Sokovia before?” 

Tony nodded.

“And you met these two, these twins—the Maximoffs?” (Another nod.) Bruce rubbed his knuckles into his palm and hesitated. “I played the tapes,” because Bruce liked to know what the Hulk did, liked to know how he worked with the team, liked to know the things his body did while it wasn’t quite his. “What happened where you’re from? With me,” but that wasn’t quite the right question, “with the other guy?”

Tony shrugged. 

Bruce frowned at him. “The first thing you said was _get Banner out of there_. That’s not the sort of thing you say if you don’t know something bad is about to happen.”

In this world, they worked over time to anticipate the bad. They worked hard to react to it. They built electrified floors and took people’s shoes and established protocol for _bad_. If it weren’t effective, if it didn’t seem to be _working_ , he would have been laughing. He would have called it a waste. But this world was different, it played by different rules where Natasha looked at him and saw something worth including, and Bruce frowned at him with caution. 

Where Steve, in a cage, looked at him with honest _regret_.

“I don’t recall saying that. Not those exact words in that exact order.” (Maybe he had, who could know.) “I just know what Wanda can do and it didn’t seem like—it just didn’t seem like a smart idea to you—you know, let her,” he motioned at Bruce’s head. “Poke around.”

“Wow,” Bruce said. He shifted on his feet again so there was space between them. “She’s a better liar than you are.”

Tony crossed his arms over his chest, “I get the impression she’s better than me at most things.” In fact, the only thing he did better than her was create more. By numbers, he outdid her without breaking a sweat. There was no competition where the numbers were concerned. “Just, keep your distance from Wanda Maximoff.”

But Bruce had a worst-case-scenario brain and an analytical mind. “So, she did something. Something to the other guy?”

“Does it matter?” Tony asked. “That was a different place, a different you, a different Wanda.” (A different Tony, a different Steve, a different everything.) 

Bruce was sympathetic with a nod, because he understood, he really did. But none the less, there he was nodding his head and saying, “I know, I know.” He looked left, down the hallway, toward where Steve was kept in a containment cell. “But if you know something, if Wanda,” he said the name like he wasn’t even sure it was real, “is capable of manipulating me, of upsetting the other guy, I’d like to know.”

“Yes,” Tony said.

“Yes?”

“Yes, she’s capable of manipulating you. Of _upsetting_ ,” with an implication of air quotes, “the other guy.”

Bruce wasn’t surprised but he looked ever-so-slightly disappointed nonetheless. He was nodding softly, really rubbing his knuckles into his palm. “Thank you for telling me,” expressed a hundred things except gratitude.

“She is _capable_ of manipulating all of you, all of,” he spun his finger in a circle, “us. Nobody’s immune.”

“That’s not really a comfort,” Bruce said.

Tony shrugged. “The other guy, the Hulk didn’t do the most damage. If that’s what you’re worried about. Veronica works.”

“We haven’t used Veronica,” Bruce said. He looked _pained_ by diplomacy. “I was hoping we never would. I guess—I guess that’s not really a possibility.” (Disappointed, but not surprised.) Bruce was all set to retire to his dim bedroom and brood about his destructive potential but he stuttered at the stepping-away portion to look back at Tony. “Who did the most damage?”

(I did.) Tony just shrugged. “Hard to tell. We all took a hit. We weren’t our best. I should head back,” he pointed a thumb back toward the containment room. “I’m—I was,” just hiding from the room with no windows. “Sitting with Steve.”

“Yeah, of course,” Bruce agreed. He was nodding the whole time he watched Tony make a strategic retreat. (But it wasn’t strategic it was hurried footsteps taking him back to the exact place his hurried steps had taken him away from not-so-long-ago.)

# B SIDE

Steve sat with his back pressed to the chair bolted to the floor. His legs stretched out in front of him, his arms hanging at his sides. Tony sat with his back against the wall, his legs crossed and his fingers fidgeting in his lap. It was-and-was- _not_ what she might have done if she were here. Because she would have been in this room, unsure about what to say to him, but she wouldn’t have been staring at her fingernails, keeping her mouth shut, looking as if the weight of the world was going to crush her. 

“It’s almost a relief,” Tony said. He looked up with a smile that didn’t quite make itself entirely believable.

“What?” Steve asked.

“You _do_ have a dark side.” Tony nodded, his smile stretched thin, his hands went still in his lap. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I had a conversation with my wife,” it was easy to call her that, to remind himself that even if she weren’t here she was still somewhere, still alive, and she would still make it back. It was important to remember that (important to remember he hadn’t killed her). “The press, they like to come up with new things to call her. The merchant of death,” Steve said and Tony snorted. “War-Monger, I’m sure you know.”

“I’m familiar.”

“The thing is, the people who benefitted from Stark weaponry, they revered Howard as a futurist. He was thought of as a good man, as necessary and patriotic. People think I’m a patriot,” he motioned at his own chest. It wasn’t hard to imagine why they thought of him as a patriot, what with the stars and stripes as tight as spandex over his body. What with the name they’d given him. “Tony shut down weapons manufacturing but they won’t stop. She’ll always be the merchant of death. She’ll always be the woman that made weapons that killed millions.” Steve shrugged. “I’m Captain America, I’m a Super Soldier, I’m the greatest soldier in history.”

“God’s righteous man,” Tony added, like he was repeating it. 

“There’s trading cards with my face on them,” Steve said. (He’d seen them, he’d signed some for people that cared. It was humbling, almost embarrassing, to be revered as something he couldn’t live up to.) “People expect her to be careless, to be flippant, to not _care_. I’ve seen her after a battle where innocent people died. I’ve seen her,” out in the streets, after New York, staring at the debris with shock-white-lips, trying to figure out what could be _done_. “She cares. She cares more than I do.”

Tony snorted. 

“War kills people. Innocent people die all the time. I don’t like it, and I’ll do what I can to stop it, but I don’t lose sleep over it when I’ve done the best I can. If you can’t make peace with the ones you can’t save, you’ll never be able to sleep.”

“Does she sleep?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Steve said. “We do the best we can. We save the people we can.” When that wasn’t enough, there was always something that needed doing. Another project, another organization, another fundraiser. Tony was relentless and unstoppable. Steve had to hold her in place (now and again) to remind her that some things _had_ to be felt. Some fears couldn’t be conquered, some tears should be shed. “We have contingencies, and protocols.”

“What about you?” Tony asked. “Do _protocols_ help you feel better? Do you sleep?”

Steve slept like the dead; unbothered by the cost of action. “I choose to believe that things would be worse if we did nothing. Sometimes,” he shrugged, “there’s not much that you can do. Sometimes a car runs a red light, kills a woman on the crosswalk—we blame the driver, he goes to jail. Sometimes a landslide kills ten thousand people, we call it an act of God, people go to Church. Three people died because we infiltrated the castle in Sokovia. How many would have died if we hadn’t? How many have already died while we waited?”

Tony ran his tongue across his lips. “So that’s it? Innocent people will die no matter what, so we don’t have to care? We don’t have to be feel responsible? We’re just— _Absolved_ of guilt because things might have been worse?”

“No.”

Tony leaned forward with his hand in the air, grasping at the thing he wanted to say. “You sleep _fine_. Those three innocent people that died today? That doesn’t bother you?”

“I wish they hadn’t,” Steve conceded. “I did what I could to stop it.”

They, Tony and him, couldn’t have known one another at _all_ in that other world. They couldn’t have ever shared a conversation or a moment. There must have been no civil disagreements or gatherings, no moment of acceptance or understanding that passed between them. Or worse (much worse, far worse now that his wife was there) the Steve that Tony left in his own world had never been challenged, never been provoked into _thinking_ , really _thinking_ about the world and his place in it. Just there, with Tony staring at him as if he couldn’t understand the words, it felt as if the man that Tony left behind must have been flat as a cartoon character. 

“No offense,” Tony said (at last), “but _who_ are you?”

“I’m Steve Rogers,” he said. 

Tony didn’t laugh outright but he looked _outraged_. He slouched against the wall as he stared, as he rearranged his expectations to match up to this new reality. “I’m sorry,” he said (like he’d only just said it), “I’m just having a little trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that the American Dream doesn’t _care_.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t care. I do care. I didn’t want them to die. I don’t like knowing they did. If I could have saved them, I would have. The point is—” the point had always been, even when Tony argued it out with him, “that we can’t save everyone. We have to save the ones we can. We have to trust that we are doing good in the world—if we can’t trust that, if we can’t accept that we won’t always win, we can’t do our job.”

Tony was breathless, on the verge of hysterics, leaning back in the wall as he shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something and closed it again. Instead he rubbed his hand across his mouth and sighed.

Steve looked at his own hands, at the blue lint under his fingernails. He hated how tight the gloves were around his fingers, but Tony had kissed him with amusement on her lips, reminding him how they were meant to keep him from breaking his fingers when he started punching things. She was fond of matching his every complaint with a reminder that it was only a relatively thin layer of suit between him and imminent death every time he led the charge. He smiled to himself, ran his fingernails across the rough material of his uniform pants and thought of her. 

_I like you with all your pieces, Rogers_ , might have been one of the very first _nice_ things she’d ever said to him, when she stripped him down to his underclothes to take his measurements. (Not that she’d needed to, not when Jarvis could have been just as efficient without the near-nudity.) He remembered how silly and dangerous it had felt when he wasn’t wearing anything but his underclothes, holding his pants in one hand, saying: _likewise, Ms. Stark_. 

He was terrible at flirting and she was always the first to tell him that. (I only know you’re flirting because you blush, she told him.) But his memories of her were half-gray. He thought of her in shadows, of her body arching in the tub, how frail and how thin her neck was beneath his hand. It rushed through him all hot-and-liquid, and his hands clenched up into fists. 

“Breath, Cap,” Tony said. He looked worried, but no more than normal. “It’s not real.”

His breath was hot as fire being drawn in through his nose, but it was cold and crowded in his chest. “What happened to Wanda in your world?”

The look, quick as a flash, on Tony’s face meant whatever he intended to say would be a lie. But he said, “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to compare.” 

Steve closed his eyes, concentrated on how it felt to breath, how reality felt. He concentrated on the sound of Tony trying to sit still, trying not to fidget, trying not to leave. When he thought he could manage it, he opened his eyes and uncurled his fists. His palms pushed down against his thighs as he let a breath out of his mouth. “Tell me?” was asking for the confidence he’d expected from his wife, not from this man.

“She was recruited to join the Avengers,” Tony said (very, very quietly). “She’s a valuable asset. It’s good for the team.”

(Dread, he found, was the closest sensation he had to feeling at home. The lonesome dread of his childhood, every time he caught a cold, every time he found himself alone, every time he got turned away at enlistment centers, every time it became obvious he wouldn’t be _enough_ , that he’d never _prove_ himself.) “Wanda is a member of the Avengers? She did this,” he motioned at himself, at Tony, “she attacked you and she’s a member of the Avengers? When,” this was the important part, “ _when_ did she attack you?”

“It’s,” Tony looked at his wrist like he expected it there to be a watch and found only his skin instead. “It has to be, what, June second? So, about a month? A few days short of a month ago.”

(What was it Rhodey had said on the jet? _She’s not making friends_.) “A month,” he repeated.

“In her defense, she helped us defeat the murder-bot that tried to annihilate the entire planet. As far as resumes go, I’d say it was a good one.” Tony was making light but he wasn’t making _sense_. Rather than let Steve poke at the wound (raw as it seemed), he said, “I’m guessing recruiting Wanda would be against your protocols.”

Steve laughed. It was like a kettle screaming when it boiled. “Uh, not entirely against protocol. We fought Thor when we met him for the first time. It’s not entirely without precedent. If Wanda was willing to work with us, we wouldn’t dismiss her just because of,” he motioned at himself, “as long as there was a reason, as long as we were sure she was on our side. Just,” Steve shook his head. 

“Just?”

There must have been a way to phrase it, to put the churning sensation in his gut into words. He was searching for fairness, watching Tony grow impatient while he waited, and Steve just sighed. “Tony, _my_ Tony, she—she doesn’t always react well.” Every word stalled, almost like a fresh sentence. 

This Tony, tired and heavy, lifted his eyebrows at that. “I’m not always well known for my exceptional decisions.” (Yes, but, it didn’t seem likely that his version of poor choices and her version were the same.) “What would she have done? If she were with you at Sokovia? If she saw this?”

“Well nothing,” Steve said. “Once I was compromised, she would have been removed from a leadership role, she couldn’t have made the choice about what happened.”

“Cap,” Tony said. (Like, _tell me what you’re not saying_.)

Steve shrugged, “if she had been close enough, if she’d had the immediate opportunity, there is an equal chance that she would have used lethal force as there is she would have contained and captured Wanda.”

“What about you? What if it had been the other way around?” 

Steve ran his tongue across his lips, thought of his wife caught in a nightmare like this. (Wondered what it would have been, if what she thought lurked in the darkness was really there.) “She’s my wife, Tony,” was the only answer Steve had. Not because he hadn’t been put in the situation, not because he hadn’t had the opportunity to know exactly what he’d do to protect her., but because it wrapped up his answer and his explanation in a single neat sentence. “What did your Steve do?”

“I didn’t,” Tony picked at his fingernails, “I don’t know,” was as honest as the man had been yet. “I didn’t give him the opportunity to do anything. We’re not as big on protocols as you. We’re,” he motioned back and forth with a defeated smile, “not married. Things are different,” was an excuse. He shrugged, was quiet a beat, “I don’t know what he would have done.”

There was the dread again; the idea of her in that other world. Of the things she would find (and she would _find_ them because Tony was like a bloodhound on a trail, always looking for things that made her angry) and of what she would do. Steve hadn’t liked excluding Tony from the team but it wasn’t a matter of loyalty or trust, it had been a choice based on pre-existing protocol, on what was _best_ for the whole team (not just him, not just Tony). But his wife, his Tony would have woken up in a hell where she’d lost her home, Jarvis, her team, and _him_. 

“What’s that face?” Tony asked.

“I was thinking about what my wife must be doing,” Steve said. To _him_ , to this Steve of a different world. 

Tony snorted at that. “She’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t really her that Steve was worried about. “Yeah,” was just agreeing. “You don’t have to stay.”

Tony shrugged. “I didn’t have any plans.”

# A SIDE

Coffee, like beer, did nothing for him. Every morning, the smell of it accompanied him through the halls, away from the kitchen, toward the gym. He’d tried it, as any human being in this modern time was compelled to, for the sake of it. He’d tried it black, with cream, with sugar, iced, flavored, frozen and found them all to be equally unpalatable. (But he thought, almost like he’d been programmed to think it, _I need coffee_ , every morning he woke up feeling like he hadn’t slept at all the night before.) 

Rhodey was already in the gym, just barely after dawn, dressed in workout clothes: sweats and an old, faded Air Force shirt damp enough it clung to his shoulders. There was a towel over his shoulder, one of his hands clenched around a water bottle and the other hanging at his side as he stood beneath the TV and watched morning news. 

It wasn’t (for once) a replay of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sokovia. Tragedy gave way to movie news and the morning news reset itself to concentrate on better things. Actors and actresses and funny stories about children and dogs. Steve sighed (to himself, not out loud, he didn’t think) at the news, at the sun barely making the sky a soupy sort of gray. He said, “morning.”

Rhodey wasn’t his friend. Up to a few days ago (only five, maybe), they had not even been co-workers. They had managed a polite but indifferent relationship up to that point; the sort of acquaintanceship you maintained with the often-invited friend of a friend. If Steve was being especially honest (and he tried to be honest, when he could) until the moment he showed up Sokovia, Rhodey had been primarily known as ‘Tony’s friend’. Just there, with Rhodey glancing back over his shoulder, offering not so much as a nod, the distance between them had never been so evident. 

“How’d it go,” Steve asked. “With Tony? Do you think we can trust her?”

Rhodey didn’t respond immediately. He didn’t ignore the question either, but wipe his face with the end of the towel and pick up the remote to turn the TV off. When he turned, he was considering what he meant to say, picking out the words he planned to use while his body moved without him. Rhodey had the stance and the motion of a career soldier, the perfect posture and the general aura of every commanding officer Steve had ever met in the war. “Well,” was Rhodey being very _selective_ with what he intended to say. “I believe it’s Tony. I don’t know how but she _is_ Tony.”

Steve had known that since the first moment she stepped out of that suit. Since she looked right at his face with a smile, knowing she’d broken his arm and not being even a little sorry about it. He nodded, let his hands rest on his hips. “Can we trust her? Is she working on the problem?”

“She’s Tony,” Rhodey repeated. “I trust Tony.”

It hadn’t _not_ occurred to him, that he would send Rhodey to see if Tony-was-Tony and what her intentions were and Rhodey would return on Tony’s side. That was simple logic; it was default. “Is she working on how she got here, and how she’s going to get back?”

“Yes.” Rhodey’s arms were crossed over his chest now. Steve had stood across a short distance from enough men sizing him up for a fight to recognize the look: the narrow eyes, the bicep flexing, the general demeanor of attempting to look larger and scarier. It wasn’t very often (anymore) he found himself standing across from a man going through the motions without any intent to make a move. Rhodey was bristling with annoyance but he wasn’t going to fight; he was just going to stand, and glare, and think about a fight. “There’s not a lot to work with,” Rhodey admitted.

“So, she has no idea how to get back, how to get our Tony back?”

“Do you?” Rhodey asked.

“I’m not a genius.”

Rhodey looked as if he had never heard anything he agreed with more in his whole life. “At this time, she does not have an idea about how to get back or how she even got here.” But more importantly, as Rhodey shifted on his feet, “what are we going to do about our Tony until he gets back? What are we planning on doing about what they’re saying on the news?”

(Perhaps Steve should have remembered their Tony had convinced Bruce to build Ultron, not once but twice, both times against his better judgment. Perhaps he should have remembered that before he sent Rhodey Tony’s-best-friend to check and see if Tony were trustworthy.) “What can we do?” Steve asked. “I don’t like it, but I don’t know what _I_ can do to stop them? Go on the news, tell them ‘no that wasn’t Tony’s robot’?”

“Why not?” Rhodey asked.

“I’m not a respected member of the robotics field, to start with,” Steve said.

Rhodey didn’t roll his eyes but it seemed to take a monumental amount of effort to restrain himself. “You’re _Captain America_.”

(As if that would solve anything.) Steve didn’t sigh, he licked his lips and pressed his fingertips in against his hipbones. “That won’t make them believe me.”

Rhodey snorted. “You’re kidding?” wasn’t a question but an accusation. (Had Rhodey been this angry yesterday, before he went to see Tony? Had he been hiding all this just behind his perfectly polite face?) “You’re _exactly_ the person everyone in America wants to believe.” Rhodey motioned at him. “You’re everything American. White, almost blonde, blue eyed. You put an American flag on that chest and it won’t matter what you say, they’ll believe it.”

“That’s—” Ridiculous? (But hadn’t men in suit jackets done exactly that? Hadn’t they slapped him in a suit of stars and stripes and sent him to beg for money for the war?) “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to bring too much attention to Tony right now.” 

Because Tony, the one that belonged here, was not present to show up on talk shows and senate hearings to explain his innocence and his future plans. The more they kept talking about him, the more people would want to hear. Steve didn’t know much about how trends and public relations worked but he did know that. 

“I disagree,” Rhodey said.

“Of course, you do,” slipped right out of his mouth before he could contain it. “Look,” was meant to cut off the fight before it could escalate. “We need a real plan, one that addresses more than just the—” conspiracy theorists, getting close to but not quite at the truth, “ _rumors_ about Tony. I don’t like it, but I think the people of Sokovia deserve more. It doesn’t matter what the news says about Tony, he always comes out alright. Can we say the same thing about the people living on the edge of the crater Ultron made?”

Rhodey’s anger was a bleak silence. He didn’t speak but clench his jaw. There was a lecture rattling behind his almost blank stare; some sort of meaningful reproach that was bubbling in his throat but he didn’t say it. 

Steve didn’t want to say it; but it was safe enough to think that this was _exactly_ the reason trusting Tony was so difficult. He had a gravity all his own, one capable of warping and distorting even the most basic facts. Why did you build Ultron, Tony? To protect the planet, to save us from aliens, and what would you have done? Truth was, Steve didn’t know what he’d do. He hadn’t known what he’d do before New York, he hadn’t known what he’d do before he was in that plane in 1945 staring at a screen full of targets, but he knew _now_ and he knew (or thought he did) that these sorts of plans and these sorts of precautions were best thought of together. Not separately. Steve said, ‘we would have done it together’ and Tony said ‘we’d lose’ and reality had warped to make the unknowable into fact. 

Look at where they were now: reduced to 5 strangers pretending to make a team. And one Tony that wasn’t their Tony, turning teammates against one another. 

“That’s funny, six days ago you had no intention of doing anything about Sokovia. Now that you’re being asked to stand up for a member of your team, you care?” Rhodey wasn’t laughing, wasn’t _asking_. “It’s not an arguable point; only a monster would stand here and tell you that _Tony_ is more important than thousands of people. That’s very convenient for you, _captain_.”

Almost as convenient as how Rhodey hadn’t trusted-or-liked this woman that was-and-wasn’t his best friend just about thirty-six hours ago. “You’re twisting my words,” Steve said. “I want to help them both. I just feel like we should have a plan. _Plans_ are what keep us from repeating our mistakes.” Like Ultron, like the glorious disaster of Tony (unsupervised) building nightmares into reality. “What’s your suggestion? Call the president, tell him it wasn’t Tony?”

“That’d be a start,” Rhodey said.

Steve coughed, didn’t laugh, looked sideways out the windows that lined one wall of the gym and then back at Rhodey. “What if I don’t believe it?”

Rhodey nodded while he considered that. He made a show of thinking it over, of rubbing his chin, raising his eyebrows, really taking in the thought of it before he arrived at a conclusion. He stepped forward, lurched into motion without thought, until he was close enough whatever he intended to say was only meant to be heard in confidence. “You’re right about one thing, captain. No matter what happens, Tony will be okay.” There was enough coiled violence in the words that it was only amazing he hadn’t delivered the words with his fist. Instead he brushed past, leaving nothing but heavy silence in his wake.

Steve closed his eyes, let his head hang. (Thought: maybe he’d never been good at this, talking to people, or maybe he had, and he’d lost it. Maybe this is what it felt like when people tried to tell him about what Bucky-had-done and he couldn’t-or-would _not_ hear it.) Regardless, he sighed, “fuck,” into the empty space around him.


	7. Chapter 7

# A SIDE

The punching bag never really stood a chance. Even on a good day, they rarely stood a chance, but _today_ riding the coattails (so to say) of a(nother) conversation about what they were going to do—

What they should do—

What they _had_ to do—

For Tony _Goddamn_ Stark, it stood a less of a chance than average. It wasn’t that Steve didn’t agree that something needed to be done; it wasn’t as if he enjoyed listening to the constant news coverage searching for anyone to blame. Tony was an easy, high-profile, well-documented target because there was nobody (no-bod-ee) on the planet as well known for arrogance and genius the way Tony was. He was Iron Man, was a Billionaire, was a Playboy (and a philanthropist). They replayed the videos of him at Senate hearings blowing kisses to Senators when they talked about how he had a history of misbehaving. 

It took no _effort_ to side with the men holding up bolts and saying bullshit about how it proved that Tony-Stark-had-created-the-monster. (But what was easy, Steve had learned when he still just a half-grown-kid in Brooklyn, watching the strong boys picking on kids that wouldn’t stand up for themselves, was not always _right_.) Doing the _right_ thing (damn the consequences) was what he’d built his life on. Challenging bullies to fights he was doomed to lose had always made sense to him; it had always seemed right. It never seemed to matter much to the bullies, as they laughed at him, as they scoffed and they balled up their fists to knock him down again. (But they cared, very much, all those times Bucky found him pinned against a brick wall, getting beat up over bad manners. Bucky was just as big and just as strong. That made them care in a way that almost two decades of constant effort never had.)

Erskine asked him if he wanted to kill Nazis; Steve didn’t want to kill anyone, he just didn’t like bullies.

It would have been easier to accept the 4F, to go back to art school, to find a wife among any of the many women who had lost boyfriends and prospective lovers when all the soldiers shipped out. Steve could have had a quiet life, thanking his lucky stars he lived another day, waiting for the moment when pneumonia got him. 

No, doing what was easy, (letting Tony take the blame), was almost never the same as doing what was right.

The punching bag was warm when he pushed his forehead against it. His fists were pulsing with heat, overworked and under-protected. Steve was coated in sweat with his tongue across his lips as he tried to stop the spiral of _things_ unravelling in his head. 

He pulled it all back together. It didn’t matter what kind of bitter poison this new Tony had poured into Rhodey’s ear. (Other than the obvious complications it presented to trying to hold a brand-new-team together.) The facts hadn’t changed. The first step had to be in finding someone with experience, someone that could be impartial, and someone that he trusted. 

His knuckles were still throbbing while he stood next to (but didn’t sit at) the desk in the little office room. He was holding the phone up against his ear, staring at the freshly painted wall opposite him, thinking about nothing as much as he could, as the call went on ringing without being answered. 

“I don’t recognize the number,” Maria Hill said from the opposite end of a long-distance call. “Just making a wild guess—Stark?”

“Steve,” he corrected.

“Steve,” was agreeable enough. “How can I help, Captain Rogers?”

“I guess,” (he hadn’t entirely thought through his side of this conversation, how exactly he planned to present his problem or how he felt that she would be of some assistance to him), “I was wondering when you were coming back to work. If you were coming back.”

Maria was quiet a beat, maybe looking for a quiet place to have a conversation or maybe thinking about she’d let him down gently. “I wasn’t certain that I would have a job.”

“Have you been watching the news?” Steve asked. He turned so his back was against a wall, so he could see the doorway and anyone that might walk up to listen in. 

“I’ve caught a few shows.” There was nothing helpful about her answers. Nothing to offer any indication about what she wanted or was willing to do. “I’ve been wondering why I haven’t seen Stark on more programs, explaining why everyone’s an idiot but him.”

(Because he would, he most definitely would, if he were there. He’d ruthlessly disarm all the men who implied he’d been involved in the building of Ultron. He’d do it with a smile.)

“I’m sure he wants to.” Steve looked at his feet. “I need help,” wasn’t the hardest thing he’d ever had to admit, “we need to get ahead of this media circus, we need to—do something about Sokovia and Ultron and Tony. Or the next time we go out and something goes wrong—” 

It was just best not to be distracted by what the world thought; by what could go wrong, by what would happen if something did go wrong. It was best not to have to spend too much time looking over your shoulder for cameramen and commentators. Saving people’s lives wasn’t a sports event but there were plenty of men on the news that thought they could have done better. 

“Stark is on board?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

“You’re a terrible liar, Cap. Does Stark even know?” 

Steve didn’t want to relay the disaster that was Tony Stark’s replacement over the phone. “There’s just a slight problem with Tony that I’d rather not discuss over the phone. I’m the Avengers’ leader and I’d like you to come back to work. What Tony wants isn’t exactly a priority at the moment.”

Maria sighed. “I’ll be on the first flight back to New York.”

# B SIDE

Tony hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and when he jerked awake on the cool, hard floor it seemed impossible that he should even have been able to fall asleep. But there was, gasping at the tail-end of a familiar nightmare, knocking his elbow against the wall and his head against the floor, looking for anything to grab onto and finding nothing but slick walls and smooth floors. 

And Steve, leaning forward to touch his arm, looking tired and concerned and apologetic. “It wasn’t real,” he said.

(But it felt real; no matter how many times he repeated it, it felt like a fresh wound.) “I’m good,” he said without thinking. His palms smacked against the floor and he lifted his back up and shifted until he was leaning against the wall. “How long—when did—did you sleep?” There was no watch on his wrist, (he needed to get one), no matter how many times he looked at it. 

“Probably a couple of hours,” Steve said. “Feels like it’s eight? Maybe nine. I didn’t sleep.”

The problem with dealing with someone as perfect Steve Rogers on the average day in his own universe was trying to separate his anger at being faced with the sort of physical _perfection_ that one simply couldn’t attain from the aggravation with Steve Rogers’ unyieldingly _good_ personality. But this Steve managed to one-up the already insufferable righteousness by expressing genuine _concern_. Tony scoffed. “That’ll take some getting used to.”

There it was again, the genuine regret that permeated Steve’s entire body. There was nothing condescending, mocking or fake about it. He was still making that face when the door opened and the unassuming tech person motioned him out. Of course, one did not need to hire gigantic isolation bouncers to handle Captain America when they thought ahead enough to build a virtually escape proof room. 

Tony didn’t make it more than six steps down the hall before he ran (almost literally) into Natasha trying to look casual leaning against a wall. She was dressed for a lazy day in, not particularly threatening, as she smiled at him in a way he was sure was reassuring. “We’re having a meeting in thirty minutes. Is that enough time for you to shower and change?”

“Barely.”

Natasha’s smile was soft and amused, but she was looking him over for wounds and weak spots. There was no telling exactly what she found but she nodded and pushed herself away from the wall. “Thank you,” didn’t seem like what she should have said. “I know you don’t have the best relationship with your own Steve, this really meant a lot to us.”

“Find me something to eat that’s not lunch meat and white bread and we’ll call it even,” he said. But more importantly, “where’s my bag? And the shower?”

Natasha gave him directions and a badge that indicated his name was A. Rogers (what a sense of humor they had) but it allowed him uninterrupted access to the tower. He just had to flash it at concerned security guards and let them scan it and then he was waved through wherever he needed to go. Fresh out of the shower, he stood in front of the mirror rubbing his naked wrist and staring at nothing-exactly.

“Jarvis,” he said.

“Sir?”

No matter how many times they had the exact same exchange, Tony’s heart still jumped in his chest. There was a little burn of unfairness that fluttered and went sour. “Do I have any watches here?” 

“I believe there is one in the top drawer, sir.” And not for the first (or second) time, Jarvis said: “are you experiencing memory problems, sir? I could suggest—” 

“I’m fine, Jarvis.” He pulled the drawer of the dresser open, expecting to find something dainty or pretty and was pleasantly surprised to find that while there were certainly decorative watches (which he would have worn just to have one on) there were simple, sturdy ones. He picked one with a digital face, that perked up as soon as it was touched. It listed off the weather and coordinates, day and calendar information. At the second loosest setting it fit comfortably. “How do I look?” he asked the mirror.

“As if you are wearing clothes, sir. May I say, again, how refreshing it is when you remember to wear your pants.”

Tony snorted at that, picked up his badge and went to find the conference room the early morning (it was after nine) Avengers meeting was to be held in. They were already assembled, Thor and Barton on one side, Bruce and Natasha sitting opposite and that left Tony to sit at one end or the other. He picked up a water as he watched them all trying not to stare at him, trying not to openly watch his movements. “Where’s Rhodey?”

“He had prior obligations,” Natasha said. “We try not to keep him any longer than we have to, since he is basically on loan from the US Government. He said to tell you that he’d like to meet you if you wanted to see him.” 

Well, what was a man supposed to do with an invitation like that. He was spared from having to come up with something to say (he was working on something about setting up a play date) by Clint who was the only one of them not managing to keep from open-mouthed staring. 

“You are exactly what she would look like if she were a man,” seemed to have escaped Clint’s mouth even as he tried to contain it. Natasha rolled her eyes across the table and Bruce just pinched the bridge of his nose. “I mean, obviously you are. Not that I think about what she’d look like as a man but—are you even the same height? She’s a tall woman.” 

But Tony was not a tall man. 

“Let’s move on,” said Natasha who was not the acting leader of the Avengers. “Before we make any decisions about our next move, we’d like to know what you feel comfortable telling us about the Maximoff twins.”

Tony hadn’t even sat down yet. It wasn’t a surprise that they wanted to know. It seemed like exactly what they would have wanted from him. “That’s not a good idea.” 

“You have battled them?” Thor asked. He was wearing casual clothes, nothing overly princely or very godly. A T-shirt, a jacket. It did almost a convincing job of hiding his bulging biceps. (Very _nearly_.) 

“Yes,” Tony said. “I don’t recommend it.”

Bruce looked pained, but he said, “I think,” but that wasn’t how he wanted to start, “we can’t know what things are like in your universe and we aren’t looking to make any choices that are completely based off the information that you give us—but,” and this was an important but, “we can’t ignore that you knew _exactly_ where the power source, the scepter and Wanda would be. There appear to be enough similarities in our universes that your information could help prevent whatever,” and he motioned nonspecifically around the room, “happened to your Avengers.”

Thor was nodding, Natasha didn’t nod but she didn’t have to. Clint tapped his fingers on the table top and that left four sets of eyes peering out of four familiar faces of complete strangers waiting for him to tell them something that could make the difference between Ultron and a peaceful resolution. 

Here he was, with a chance to do things _right_. “First, they’re not _my_ Avengers. I’m semi-retired, I’m out of the game. Even before that, they were always Steve’s. I just pay for everything, and design the suits and things like that.” (These kinds of things were the reason he had no friends. He just couldn’t control his mouth.) 

Clint snorted and Thor elbowed him with more force than necessary. “Sorry,” Barton said immediately. “I just—I can’t imagine what she’d say if she heard that.”

Thor smiled and tried not to, but he was glancing sideways mouthing words that Tony couldn’t quite make out while Barton added, “and then she’d kick him in the nuts.” They were cracking up together until Natasha cleared her throat.

“What can you tell us about Wanda?” Natasha asked. It had taken her less than a full twenty fours to discover and discard Pietro Maximoff as a threat. Maybe he could have been something more than a footnote to the universe if he hadn’t been killed in action. Maybe he couldn’t ever have measured up to his sister.

“She’s just a kid,” sounded like something he’d heard Steve say once or twice. “She hates me, Stark, specifically. She’s willing and capable of taking down anyone that she thinks is helping me.”

“Why does she hate you?” Bruce asked.

“My weapons.” It was always his weapons, always his legacy, always war-and-blood-and- _death_. Tony scratched at the overgrowth of hair on his cheeks. “Sokovia’s a warzone, it has been her whole life. One side? Both sides? They used my weapons to fight their war. She got caught in the crossfire, her parents died.”

“Does she believe in Hydra’s mission?” Natasha asked.

Tony shook his head. “She’s just a kid. They offered her a chance to do something to help her country. She’s dangerous,” that was true, “but she’s not—she has the potential to be one of the good guys.”

Bruce was eying him critically, sensing there was a massive hole in the story. “How did you convince her to switch sides?”

He hadn’t; he hadn’t even thought to try. (He probably wouldn’t have thought to try.) It was only that Steve had gone to stall Ultron and he’d come back with Wanda-and-Pietro as allies and team members. “I don’t know,” was honest. It had been something about Ultron and his plans for world annihilation. “Steve did that—I didn’t.”

“Is there anything else we need to know?” Natasha asked.

Tony looked at Thor, (thought maybe he shouldn’t) and said, “Loki’s scepter is powered by the Mind Stone. It’s an Infinity Stone? Capable of untold destruction?”

“I have heard of the Mind Stone,” Thor agreed. Even if he’d heard of it, he didn’t seem to have known that it was hiding in Loki’s scepter. The information made him uncomfortable, made him look across the table with more concern than he’d managed before. “What was Hydra attempting to do with the scepter?”

“Human experimentation,” Bruce offered. “That’s what the Maximoffs are, human experiments?” 

Tony nodded. Natasha was watching him too closely, mapping out his body language and his nervous actions. She interrupted the growing noise of conversation to say, “Tony, thank you. I know you couldn’t have gotten much sleep last night. I’m not saying you couldn’t stay if you wanted to, but if you wanted to get something to eat, some sleep, we can talk again after you’ve had a chance to rest.”

Her intention was to give him a quick, clean exit. At the same moment he was almost offended to have been so transparent, he was grateful for the offer. Her smile was sad, the others agreed that he had been kept awake by helping their friend, but was all noise. Tony said, “I am a little hungry,” because he was, “I’ll just get something to eat, maybe a nap.”

# A SIDE

Long before she had the Iron Man armor, Tony had developed an impenetrable mask that fit so closely to her face it had seemed as if nobody could tell the difference. It started with a bit of foundation that covered all the embarrassing imperfections. There was a strategic neutrality to the colors she used on her face, a perfect mix of acceptably attractive that didn’t veer too far toward feminine. 

She’d built her mask in childhood, always standing to the side of her father with her pretty long hair in delicately twisted curls, wearing a dress and stockings like a precious porcelain doll. She had been a curiosity at company parties, the daughter of the futurist Howard Stark. Her photoshoots were an endless parade of images of a little girl with oversized tools, pretending to be just like her Dad. Back in those days, her mask was a smile and a bat of her eyelashes because all the grown men that wanted her Father’s money, endorsement and cooperation thought she was just _precious_.

But Tony hadn’t perfected her porcelain face until she shaved her head at seventeen, until she was all alone and _furious_ , staring at her naked face in the mirror that she still hadn’t found at forty-five. Here she was now, both hands against the vanity in the bathroom, wearing nothing but the water that was dripping out of her hair, staring at the imperfections of her face. Those little wrinkles that gathered at her eyes and the edges of her lips. The lines that she’d earned from a lifetime of frowning over books and papers and dissembled machine bits. 

There were shrapnel scars all over her chest, those little divots to remind her exactly how effective her weapons really were. There was a constellation of scars on her cheekbones because she never had figured out how to keep the suit from cutting into that part of her face. Pepper was a wizard with a make-up brush in the mornings, just before Tony went to face men with cameras. 

“Are you sure?” she asked her reflection. Because it was what Steve (her Steve, the real Steve, her husband), would have asked her if he were there. He’d be just to her left, brushing his teeth with his back leaning against the doorjamb, looking all freshly showered and inoffensively possessive of her naked body. Steve would have listened and when she finished, he would have said, “is this the only way?”

No. There was never just one way to skin a cat.

“Alright,” was what Steve would say when she told him it was what she felt needed to be done. He would argue for hours if the plan were immoral, if it were cruel, but he wouldn’t say a word if she had a good defense and an acceptable goal. “Then let’s do it.”

Tony put her mask on, covering all the human bits of her face with smooth immortality. She wasn’t an artist (not with a paintbrush) but any woman who’d made a place for herself in a man’s world was a master of disguise. Her armor was a good bra and a snug shirt, one that showed off how slim her waist was. It skimmed across the surface, giving the illusion of softness. That was as important as the length of her skirt, right on the edge between old maid and life-long-slut, she found an acceptable median that showed off her knees but not her thighs. 

She was fully dressed for battle, wearing a slim watch and a pair of sunglasses, taking one last chance to look at herself in the mirror. One last chance to let the phantom of her husband to talk sense in a world that was filled up to its eyeballs in nonsense. But Steve had nothing to say, not a word against or for, because Steve wasn’t _here_ (not even in the back of her head, where he had often taken up residence since they met almost four years ago). 

The drive to the Avenger’s compound was pleasant white noise. She didn’t call ahead but had Friday alert Steve to her approach. She waited outside for him, leaning against the door of her car with the USB drive laying against her palm. A dozen eyes were watching her from the building (only an exaggeration because she wasn’t sure there were even collectively a dozen eyes inside the building) that she could feel crawling over her naked arms and her bare shins. 

None of them mattered until Steven stepped outside to look at her. The bastard stopped four-foot-away, hands on his hips and head shaking back-and-forth as he just _sighed_ at the whole presentation. “Tony.”

“Good morning Steven,” she said. The Iron Man had a distinctive sort of motion; it was unavoidable when you covered your body with heavy metal plates powered by hydraulics. It had been weeks of grueling effort to learn exactly what she could-and-couldn’t do in a suit. Ballet dancing was straight out but she could punch through a wall when the need arose. 

But this armor, her bare legs and her low-cut T-shirt required an entirely unique sort of motion. This armor moved to grab attention, to keep all eyes looking at her. It was meant to distract and disarm. Steven was glaring at her face when she was standing still but he was watching her skirt shift across her thighs when she started to walk. “I brought you something,” she said when she was close enough to hold the USB drive up. 

“You shouldn’t have.” He took the drive from her, turned it over twice and then raised his eyebrow with it sitting in his broad palm. 

“Rhodey said I should extend an olive branch, he said it was important to show that I was willing to cooperate.” There were trackers embedded under her skin. Every time she moved her hands she felt them, or thought she did, and maybe that was exactly how this Tony felt: always hyper aware of every motion, just waiting for the sky to fall. 

“Did he?” Steven said. “So, you brought me a flash drive?”

Tony smiled. If she’d had the hair to manage it she would have flipped it. “I brought you the schematics of the suit I plan on using while I’m here.” 

Too many people accused Steven of being out-of-date, of being behind-the-times, of being outright _dumb_. (She’d been among those people, in the early days, when dealing with Steve had been more of a chore than a pleasure.) Steven wasn’t educated by modern standards; he was missing a casual lifetime’s knowledge of technological advances. Microwaves and cell phones were space-age-inventions to a man who’d turned into a capsicle before man walked on the Moon. But Steven was smart enough to curl his fingers around the USB drive, to frown at it, to know the trap he’d been caught in. He was smart enough to say, “that’s a start,” when every single part of his body wanted to call her every filthy word he’d learned in the dirty base camps of war.

“I thought you’d appreciate the gesture. I know how important it is to you that you know how to disarm an enemy or an ally if the occasional calls for it.” (That was true, at least.) 

“Should I consider you an enemy?”

Tony shook her head without her smile ever slipping off her face. Her arms and her hands were perfectly demure, not making a single move toward attack mode. “From what I understand, I’m not exactly a teammate,” and she let that simmer just long enough to see the muscle in his jaw flinch, before she added, “but I consider myself an ally of the Avengers. It’s in _Tony_ ’s best interest to maintain a cordial relationship.” She motioned at the drive presently taking up space in Steve’s tightening fist. “That’s the full schematic. I didn’t redact or alter anything.”

“Of course, you didn’t,” Steve agreed. “Any chance it’s in English?”

“Friday can translate it into any language you need.”

Steven snorted, almost like a half-laugh, as he licked his lips and looked sideways. (All that looking down at her, all that effort he was putting into looking at her eyes when her breasts were right _there_ must have been exhausting.) He was searching for civility in the rage that was making all his muscles flinch and tighten and loosen again. He slid the drive into his pocket because he must have been on the verge of crushing it. “Why do you need a suit?”

Tony was still smiling when she said, “I make it a habit to be prepared.” Steve said nothing to that. “If you need help understanding the technical jargon, Rhodey has—”

“Who do you think you’re helping?” Steven asked. She’d heard that tone before, when her future husband had been up to his eyeballs in ideas that challenged his concept of the world. It was Steve backed into a corner with no way out but through. That the sound of frustration and anger, a great underground fire burning out-of-control, giving off no signs save for the occasional release of hot gas. 

“I came here as a show of good faith.”

Steven didn’t believe her for a minute; not for a second. (Because, despite the reports, Steven wasn’t stupid. He was just as smart as he needed to be, with a shrewd stare.) “Then maybe you should show some.”

Tony cocked up her eyebrow, she let her voice drop so it was confidential. They were close enough he could hear her, close enough she could lean into his personal space. (He didn’t like that either, not at first, not until he understood the usefulness of sharing personal space.) “What exactly would you like me to show you, Steven?”

He stepped back, sighed. “Look,” was the sound of a rapid change in subject. “if you _actually_ care about Tony the way you’re trying to make people believe, maybe you shouldn’t be making choices about what’s best for him in a world you don’t understand. Let the people that know and care about Tony make those choices.”

“Oh, I plan to,” she assured him. “Just as soon as I find someone that does.”

“It must be nice to never think you might be wrong. To make judgments about things that you couldn’t possibly understand.” That was Steven working himself up a head of steam, that was him on the verge of a moral lecture.

“You think I couldn’t possibly understand you?” she asked. “Because I’ve got to tell you, Steven. I’ve met a lot of men in my life and the only thing they all have in common is thinking they’ve got depth.” 

“What you should concern yourself with,” came out with perfect civility. Steven was nothing if not a master of diplomacy, always ducking his humble head and aw-shucks-ing his way right out of taking responsibility for anything but the right thing. “Is how you got here and how you got home. Interfering with the Avengers doesn’t help anyone, not you, not _Tony_.”

They were close enough now that anyone might have mistaken them for lovers. Tony’s hands were clenched at her hips, she tipped her head to smile right at Steven’s aggravation-pink cheeks. Her body was familiar with this space, the little whisper of air between them, how Steven’s body moved to answer. He lined them up, kept his hands at his sides when her husband would have been pulling her even closer. He tipped his head to look at her face and they were seconds away from kissing (and she missed that, how easily and how happily her husband touched her). “With all due respect, Steven, there’s only one of us that comes from a world where the Avengers are a functional, respected international response team. I may be a stranger but I _am_ Tony Stark, and where I’m from Tony Stark runs this,” she spun her finger in a circle to indicate the compound and the Avengers in general, “and she does a better job than an angry toddler in a flag costume. So,” she patted her hand against his chest, “I’ll be doing what it is _my_ and _his_ best interest as long as I’m here.”

Steven’s jaw was clenched so tight that he couldn’t unhinge it long enough to manage a response. 

That anger was vibrating in her whole body. It was under her skin, making her skin itch. Something was howling in the center of her chest, something feral and ugly, scratching and clawing to get to the surface. But she had played out this scene again and again, and nothing was gained (except personal satisfaction) by introducing her fist to Steven’s face. “But you should do something about Sokovia, Steven. If you keep letting the press write the narrative, they might eventually figure out you don’t shit patriotism.”

The space between them stretched, Steve stepped back. He was furious but keeping all his hands to himself, saying, “people are going to get hurt. What you’re doing? This _game_ ,” he spit that word like it offended him, “whatever you think you’re doing? It’s going to get people hurt. People I care about.”

Tony smiled, as sweetly as she’d ever smiled for cameras and men hoping for handouts, “which people, Steven? Which ones do you care about? Wanda? Natasha? Rhodey? Which ones that you,” she pointed at his chest, “care about haven’t _already_ been hurt? What I think I’m doing,” she shrugged, “is offering you an olive branch.”

“Yeah,” Steven agreed without releasing any of the tension holding his body together, “our Tony thought he knew better than everyone too. I’m sure that’s a comfort to the homeless families in Sokovia.” He pulled the drive out of his pocket and held it up. “Thank you for this,” was the least sincere thing any Steve Rogers had ever spoken.

She kept her smile, “you’re welcome.” It was a short walk back to the car with him watching her every single move. “You know where I am if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

“Oh,” was a small break in the tension, a cough of disbelief, “I think you’ve done your share.”

# B SIDE

The doors opened exactly twenty-four hours later. Steve waited until he saw Natasha standing in the open doorway holding out a pair of shoes. She was going for apologetic and managing only not-amused.

Still, shoes and freedom were welcome things. He leaned against the wall outside the door and slid his feet into the shoes. There was another bottle of water to match the first fifty he’d already been given (about half of which he’d actually drank) and a couple of Stark Industry’s work-in-progress nutrition bars. They were an attempt to meet Steve (and Bruce, and possibly Thor’s) caloric needs without the trouble of having to eat twelve meals a day. (Not that he usually managed it, or Bruce needed to eat that much when he wasn’t turning into the Hulk regularly.) Tony had been amused and horrified to see him eat in the beginning and then just annoyed at how long it took to consume that amount of food. “My favorite,” he said.

Natasha snorted, “I’d watch what you say. She’s definitely reviewing the footage when she gets back.”

Steve snorted. One of the bars said it was supposed to be banana nut muffins and the other one assured him it was meant to be peanut butter. Neither of them tasted like anything (at least not anything they were supposed to taste like) but they worked in a pinch. “What’d you learn?”

“You know I can’t—”

Steve pulled open the banana nut nutrition bar first. (It smelled like bananas, at least the sort of bland bananas people ate nowadays.) He raised his eyebrow to her quick denial as they walked toward the elevators. 

Natasha rolled her eyes. “He’s—” she raised her hands and dropped them. None of them wanted to be the first one to say it. (Loyalty was funny like that, always catching your tongue before you could say anything maybe not-good about the male version of a loved one.) “There’s damage,” wasn’t outright attributing that damage to the person they were speaking about. “He doesn’t trust us, we make him uncomfortable. He’s not used to this,” she raised her arms to indicate the entire building. “He’s not even one of us in his world, he said he retired.”

Steve (worked very hard to swallow the nutrition bar he wanted to spit into a potted ficus) said, “he said he built a murder bot.”

“Tony wouldn’t build a murder bot.”

“Not on purpose,” Steve agreed. But he was living with a nightmare just beneath his skin, a suddenly awakened fear that it was only a matter of time before he outlived his own resolve. There was a thin line between just-a-boy-from-Brooklyn and the villain he’d seen in Wanda’s nightmares. 

Natasha spun on her feet when they got to the elevators. It was her body between him and the buttons. “So, what are we going to do?”

That was a question he’d been holding off thinking up an answer to since he woke up next to the wrong Tony. What felt like a lifetime to him (as tired, hungry and sore as he was) couldn’t even be measured in weeks. It was only _days_. It had been five days. “Right now,” because this choice couldn’t be made here, under these circumstances, “I’m going to take a shower, and maybe a nap, and when I wake up, I will try to figure out what to do.”

No. That wasn’t the right answer. It wasn’t the reassurance that Natasha was looking for. 

“I made a promise before God to take care of her in sickness and health,” he had made that promise to a justice of the peace, not a priest, but that was only a minor detail, “I don’t plan on breaking that promise now or ever.” 

That, at least, made Natasha step back far enough he could hit the button on the elevator. “We’re calling Sam in,” she said. “There’s no immediate threat because we haven’t made a determination about how to proceed as far as the Maximoffs are concerned but we’d rather not be short staffed.”

“How long am I out?” he asked.

“Thor had to physically hold you down,” Natasha said. As if that translated into measurements of real time. “Whatever that was? It’s obvious you don’t just walk it off. Maybe if that was it, if that was only thing, I’d say a week. But your wife,” she pointed upward through all the floors between them and his bedroom. “ _And_ this?”

Steve sighed. He didn’t like it but the system hadn’t been put into place for him to like it under the circumstances. It had been made when all heads were level, by unanimous approval, with provisions and amendments all argued out, so every voice was equal and every concerned was answered. It was the best they could do with the situation they were in. “Yeah,” he said. “Can I go?”

“Get some sleep.”

He was planning on doing that. Inside the elevator he frowned at the bars he’d been given, trying to weigh out rather it was worth it to eat them or to be hungry (and deal with the phantom voice of his angry wife reminding him that nobody really understood how the super serum worked but his metabolism alone required more calories than he habitually consumed). It was just as easy to suffer through eating them as waking up hungry enough to eat a whole pig (he’d been banned at several establishments offering free meals to anyone that could eat their oversized hamburgers). 

Steve hadn’t overcome modesty in all situations, just in the ones like his own bedroom. So, there he was shirtless and shoeless with his pants unbuttoned and all set to be shoved down his legs before the sleep-startled, “wait a minute,” interrupted him from the bed. (Natasha could have mentioned that she’d sent Tony to bed.) 

“Oh,” was the best he could manage with both his hands caught mid-shove at trying to escape his overly tight pants. “Sorry?”

Tony was sitting on the side of the bed wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing all night, rubbing one of his eyes with the heel of his hand, looking like he’d lost sleep since they last saw each other. “No. My fault. I keep forgetting this isn’t my bed.” He leaned over to grab a watch off the bedside table. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t have to.”

Tony stopped halfway to standing, caught between finishing the motion and sitting back down. The way he looked at Steve was all suspicious (and a bit of the sort of open curiosity that people always stared at his naked body with). “I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not. I just need a shower,” Steve said.

“I already napped,” was searching for the right key phrase to release him.

“Tony,” Steve said.

That made the man sigh, made him give up on the idea of standing up. He sat on the bed. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t try to leave again either. It was a compromise, even as begrudging as it was. Steve sighed to himself and opened the closet to find a pair of pants comfortable enough to wear after being trapped in the Captain America pants for twenty-four straight hours. 

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” he said.

“Take your time,” Tony answered. 

A shower wasn’t that far removed from a bathtub. There were no bubbles but there was water and the nearness of the memory of his wife’s body against his. He let his head hang in the hot water, let the shower pour over his sore muscles, over the fading pink marks of Thor’s hands holding him down. When he was clean (enough) and the too-tight-feeling of being squeezed into pants meant for combat and not casual wear had faded enough to be bearable he turned the water off and toweled himself off.

It was just there, in front of the mirrors, not so far from the vanity, with the towel hanging from his fist, that he got caught. That he found himself staring at his reflection (wondering if he looked the same in that other world). Tony was-and-wasn’t a fan of mirrors. For her they weren’t meant for preening but talking herself down from rash action. Looking at himself now, without her, he wanted to say: _what the fuck should I do_ but there would be no answer. There would be no wife half-distracted by his naked body, filled up to her eyeballs in aggression, that wrapped her arms around his chest as she leaned in against him. She said things like, _What do you want to do_ knowing that what he wanted and what had to be done almost never matched up. 

But this was simple, because Tony would have been white-knuckled with fury, staring at him like a direct challenge, waving her arm at the problem (that man in their bed) as if the answer was so obvious anyone could have figured it out. For her it would have been as simple as that, as easy as pie, just one woman against the world. Tony would have said, _we protect our own. We do what it takes._

Steve pulled the loose-legged-sweats on and scrubbed his hair dry. He hadn’t brought a shirt with him but he grabbed one from the dresser on his way back out. He’d expected that Tony would have left while he was in the shower, but the man was still there.

Tony was sitting on the edge of the bed where he’d left him, staring at the watch how he’d been ten-fifteen-minutes-ago. His shoulders slumped with exhaustion, his body seemed to cave in on itself, he looked up with a sad kind of smile, as if he’d only just arrived at a conclusion he’d been working hard not to. (And Steve knew that look, he’d seen it on his wife’s face before.) “Good shower?”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed.

Tony nodded, ran his tongue across his lips, worked himself up to sitting upright. He was trying to reconstruct a mask to hide his face and failing, managing nothing more than a glance sideways as he said (like he didn’t even intend to), “I don’t know how to get home. I don’t know that there is a way.”

“I know,” Steve said. He sat on the bed a quiet distance from Tony, thought about touching him and couldn’t work out if it was or wasn’t a good idea. He meant it as comfort, to give and to receive, but—

“I’m sorry,” Tony said. He looked right at Steve as he said it, and maybe it would have been easier if he hadn’t. If maybe he hadn’t meant it exactly how it sounded, maybe if he hadn’t been sorry for ending up here, for taking her away. “You probably want to sleep, I’ll go—”

“Tony,” jumped right out of his throat. He wanted to say _please stay_ but it would have been cruel. It would have asked too much. So, he just said, “whatever happens, we’ll work it out. Everything will be okay.”

Tony’s smile was hollow, he shrugged with a smirk, saying, “of course. I know that.” But he didn’t. 

(And really, alone in the room he was meant to share with his wife, Steve couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it either.)

# A SIDE

Steve sat at the head of the table.

To his right was Natasha, keeping a calm face with a questioning eyebrow, as she tried to work out who was friends and who was enemies inside their own god damned team. (Steve wanted to know too, exactly who was for and who was against the idea of proceeding as planned.) Sam was sitting next to her with an air of calm that left him with the appearance of ease that only narrowly missed being convincing. 

To his left was Vision looking modest and not all-powerful with a pair of dark khakis and a nice sweater over a button-down shirt. Wanda was tucked into what looked like an alcove in between Vision and Rhodey. 

“So,” Steve began. The flash drive that Tony had given him was sitting in between his loosely curled hands and the glass pitcher of water that nobody was going to drink. “We need to discuss how we would like to handle the continuing fallout from the battle in Sokovia. I believe our primary concern should be what we can do to assist the people who were displaced,” and Rhodey made the smallest sound at that, not quite a sigh, not quite a huff, “I’ve called Maria Hill back to help us organize a response to the ongoing press coverage.”

The information prompted no immediate reaction, each of them was wrestling with what they thought of it. (At least the few of them that had ever worked with Hill. Wanda and Vision were managing polite disinterest.) Natasha spoke first: “Hill has the most experience in dealing with this level of scrutiny both from the press and the government.”

Bolstered by that, Vision announced, “I agree that something should be done to ease the suffering of those that were affected by the battle with Ultron.” He glanced sideways as he said it, and Wanda offered him something very like a smile in response.

Sam was shaking his head. “We all want to do something about Sokovia but _what_ are we actually qualified to do?” 

“That is my home,” Wanda said. Her smile went cold and flat as she leaned ever so slightly closer to the table. (Not very far, not far enough to escape the safety that Vision at her side provided.)

“It’s _always_ someone’s home,” Sam said. He spoke the words gently but they were still hard.

“So, you do not care?” Wanda demanded, “So, we do not have to do anything? We do not have to worry, it has happened before?”

“That’s not what he’s saying,” Steve said. But she looked at him with anger that made her pale face pink under her cheeks. 

Her voice wasn’t amused but boiling when she asked, “What _is_ he saying?”

Rhodey lifted his hand off the table where it had been resting. He spoke directly to Wanda, not to the table, “He’s saying that we should appear to offer assistance without actually getting involved.” He looked over at Steve, like a repeat of the argument they’d already had. “He’s not wrong; the Avengers are not a humanitarian effort, they were formed as a tactical response team.”

“Your tactical response _destroyed_ my home,” Wanda said.

“ _Our_ response?” Natasha cut in. She was smiling at the words, trying not to laugh (and that would only make a bad situation worse). “I don’t recall it being our response that put a crater where your hometown was. That was _Ultron_. Remember him, the guy we tried to stop, the one you helped escape us?”

Steve cleared his throat, “Natasha.” 

“I’m just calling it how I saw it. Look, we’re not equipped or trained to offer the sort of help that Sokovia needs right now.” She looked down the table at Rhodey. He looked at her with a perfectly placid face, like he was only waiting for her to talk herself out, as if it were only a matter of time before he was proven correct. “Like it or not, the best help we can offer them is to support the most reputable charity doing work on the ground. We go in, we meddle with what’s already being done? We’re going to slow down efforts, we’re going to keep the people that need the most help from getting it.” She looked back at Wanda, at her furious face and the curve of her body, indecisively hovering between the safety of a hidden space and bold aggression.

“You speak from experience?” Rhodey asked. “What was your field again? Before you were recruited?”

Steve looked at the flash drive sitting on the table; thought of the woman that had given it to him. Thought of how she looked at him like he was nothing but an inconvenience she was going to overcome. (Or something lower, something like dogshit.)

“Forgive me,” was Visions eminently polite voice, “I am new— You mean to say we could not of any assistance in Sokovia? We cannot build a home? We cannot provide food or comfort to those that are suffering?”

Wanda rolled her eyes, tipped her body in against his side. (And that would be a problem, how easily and how quickly Vision responded to her motion, how he had put himself in a position to protect her to start with.) “They do not care. Nobody has cared about my country—”

But Rhodey interrupted, “It’s not that simple. There’s politics involved we’re not exactly well liked at the moment, you think we’re going to be welcome on the ground?”

What was it Bruce had said on the helicarrier when they were all strangers? We’re not a team, we’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos? Something like that. Something like the flash drive full of information Tony knew he couldn’t understand, extended like an olive branch. Like Steve caught in the position of accepting it or turning it down but either way he was getting fucked over by someone. Because Rhodey was sitting at the end of the table staring him down, daring (double-daring) him to speak a single word that he didn’t like. 

Natasha lifted a hand to clear the air, to bring the point back to: “We have to get ahead of the press, we have to change the narrative while we have the chance.”

Rhodey motioned his hand at her, at the point she made, at the one he’d made, at how there was no denying they had to do something. (And Steve knew that the way he knew it didn’t matter what he tried, it would be used against him.) “Yes. _Thank you_. We need to start by shutting down the,” and he lifted his fingers to do airquotes around the word: “experts,” before he dropped his hands again, “they keep calling in to prove Ultron was built by Tony.”

“We need to shape the narrative,” disagreed without the pretense of politeness. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to put too much emphasis on Tony.” Natasha glanced sideways at him as she said it but only just for a second, long enough to see she wasn’t going to get cut off.

“As a man whose career has involved both extensive contact with the press and controlling the public perception of Tony Stark, I disagree.”

The whole time Rhodey was talking, Sam was nodding along, cracking up with amusement around the words ‘public perception’ so when he said, “maybe if you’d done your job better we wouldn’t be here,” there was an uneven humor to his voice.

But that wouldn’t help. (Nothing would help.) “Sam,” Steve said.

Sam looked down the table at him, “I’m just saying, maybe if less people thought Tony was _capable_ of building a planet killing robot, we wouldn’t be sitting here discussing how much of our focus needed to be discrediting people who aren’t that far off from the truth.”

“The truth?” was the start of a barfight that would have to be taken outside. Rhodey was still trying to work off that head of steam he’d built up in the morning. He’d had a whole day to prime the anger, to let it fester and grow. Sam wasn’t the target he wanted but it seemed like he was willing to settle for him.

Natasha leaned in to the table, put her hand in the space between Rhodey and Sam. “Nobody is saying that Tony acted alone,” she looked right at Wanda to add, “or intentionally.”

“I believe it is simple.” Vision thought many things were simple. It was the benefit of a young age and limitless knowledge. Things were very simple to a newborn. Cry for food, cry for warmth, cry for comfort. No matter the problem, crying would solve it. “We benefit from the shelter that Mr. Stark provides; if we plan to continue to benefit from it we cannot act as if we are not indebted to our benefactor.” That was true at least; you didn’t stay in a place you couldn’t pay for. “Further more, none of us were ignorant of the threat Ultron posed; none of us is blameless in his creation and so we are all responsible for what happened to Sokovia. To turn our backs on one single member of our group is to deny that we are all to blame.”

“Thank you,” Rhodey said again.

Sam snorted. “Weren’t you born _after_ Ultron was created?”

Vision nodded. “I was.”

“Are you even entitled to an opinion?” Sam asked. 

Natasha looked at him, away from the growing noise of their voices flowing together. Rhodey was defending Vision because Vision made a point that supported the outcome Rhodey wanted but Wanda was quiet, looking at her hands under the edge of the table. Steve leaned back in the chair, thought of the war, of the Howling Commandos, thought of how simple the world had been when it broke down to rank and respect. 

(No. Steve thought of her, of Tony, of how she looked at his face, how she said: _I’ll keep doing what’s in my best interest_ as she called him a toddler in a costume. It was her voice, her smile, the slant of her body, and the god damned flash drive sitting on the table that was filling up his head as the rabid noise of the room grew-and-grew-and grew.)

“Stop,” he said when he couldn’t make out the individual words anymore. “We _are_ going to do something about Tony,” he picked up the flash drive, “you’re the resident Stark liason? You’re his best friend and a fellow MIT graduate?” He threw the drive at Rhodey, watched him just barely catch it, “work with Hill, find a way to put an end to the rumors, and if you have time take a look at the schematics of the suit she plans to use while she’s here, tell me how to disarm the damn thing if she decides to attack me again.” 

The whole table was staring at him. Steve rubbed his face and leaned forward. “We have to do something to help Sokovia,” he said that to Wanda. “I don’t know what. I don’t know what we can do, what we’d even be welcome to try to do. But we are going to do _something_. If nobody else has anything _useful_ to add, we’re done for the night.”

Natasha looked like she wanted to say something but she didn’t. Rhodey was looking at the flash drive in his hand with something like a smile. 

“Ok, good,” Steve stood up and the chair he’d been sitting in was kicked backward. “Hill should be here tomorrow, I’ll keep everyone briefed on our options.” He didn’t run but walk out: out of the room, down the hall, out the nearest exit to the slow-dimming light of an early summer evening. He was alone under the sky, hands on his hips, eyes closed, feeling every single part of his body vibrating out of tune with the other. 

(Thinking about her, how sure she was, how she knew _everything_.)

# A SIDE

Pepper jumped when the bathroom door slapped shut. (To be fair, Tony would have jumped too if someone had slammed the bathroom door in her office.) She’d managed to bypass the need for a convincing lie that would allow her access to any part of Stark offices by commanding Friday to tell her the quickest route that took her directly to Pepper without having to show any credentials. 

“To— What are you doing here?” Pepper hissed.

“I kind of own it,” Tony retorted.

Pepper balled up the paper towel she’d been using to pat her face (which was pink under her foundation) and threw it into the wastebasket. Her entire body shifted from startled to in-charge, a subtle shift of muscle and ligament that ended with Pepper at her full height not frowning but not smiling. A short eternity of working for Tony Stark made one immune to common scare tactics; Pepper could have faced off against a ruthless dictator without batting an eye. “No. I believe you are mistaken.” She moved to let herself out of the bathroom and Tony slid in between her and the exit. “What are you doing?”

“The bathrooms are the only part of the building that aren’t continuously under survelliance,” Tony said. “It’d make my life easier if I didn’t have to keep coming up with fun alternative names for myself but I don’t think the world is ready to believe I’m Tony Stark.” 

Pepper snorted. “I would have thought you, of all people, wouldn’t be surprised by what the world is ready to believe about Tony Stark.” She put one hand on the sink at her side and let her other hand hang at her side. “How _can_ I help you, Ms. Stark?”

“What is Stark Industries doing about Sokovia? Do we have people on the ground? Are we working on shelter? Food? What are the plans?”

There it was, just for a second, how Pepper rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t care (because Pepper, in her experience, cared very much but only at certain times and never when being directly challenged), “you trapped me in the bathroom for this?”

“I’d also like to know what kind of experts you’ve got that can maybe go on the news and defend Tony. I mean unless we’re really comfortable letting this one play itself out. I thought the stocks suffered after I shut down weapons manufacturing but I can’t wait to see what happens when the world decides that Tony’s lost his fucking mind and is building homicidal country killing robots.”

Pepper lifted both her hands to stall the flow of words. “What _experts_?”

“Any that have a degree and a clean shirt at this point.”

Pepper snorted.

“This isn’t funny!” Tony shouted. It hit all the walls around them and echoed back. Things like that would have gotten him a cold shoulder for days. Pepper (her Pepper, the real Pepper) wouldn’t have given her the time of day, wouldn’t even have humored her for a moment, would have brushed right past her and out the door and given herself paid time off for three or four days because a working relationship like theirs required respect and respect wasn’t screaming at a hostage in a bathroom. 

Not this Pepper, no this Pepper just shook her head, looked sideways at the mirror and down into the sink. She thought it through and ran her tongue across her lips before she looked back at Tony. “There are _no_ experts when it comes to the Iron Man technology because that is kept at the highest level of clearance. To my knowledge, apart from the modified suit Tony allowed Rhodey to take, there has never been a suit made publicly available. Perhaps things are different where you’re from, perhaps you understand the value of sharing, Mrs. Rogers, but unless you’ve got a useful suggestion to make I need to go keep this company from falling apart.”

Tony punched the wall by the door before she’d even thought it through. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. (One just as likely to end in a broken fist as not.) The sound it made was sharp and red, Pepper screamed, and Tony echoed it with: “fuck!”

“What are you doing?” Pepper demanded.

Anger had brought her here, had gotten her up the stairs and through the halls and into the locked bathroom, and it was anger that made tears well up in her eyes and anger that made her voice break when she said, “I don’t know how to get back,” but it looked like and it felt like _despair_. “I don’t even know if there is a way.”

Pepper wasn’t surprised when she pulled Tony into a hug. She didn’t say anything, just tightened her arms and pulled their bodies together. There was almost familiar safety in the ring of Pepper’s arms, almost close enough to be a memory. Her touch was very soft but her voice was unyielding when she said, “I love Tony,” like it needed to be said, “I’ve loved him for a very long time.” She put just enough space between them that they could see each other’s face. “You don’t have to tell me to protect him. I always have.”

This wasn’t, not even close, where Tony thought she would find resolve. It wasn’t where she thought she’d find the first proof that Tony wasn’t alone in the world. It didn’t seem like it should have been Pepper. 

There was no chance to respond before Pepper brushed the whole thing away. “We need to give you a name and a badge. I don’t know how you got up here, but I know I wouldn’t like it. What is your first name? I had assumed Antonia.”

“That’s close enough,” Tony said. “Pepper,” felt like it was the start of an apology (maybe).

But Pepper shook her head. “Everything will be fine.” That was what Tony’s husband said when he was just about to bend reality to make it fit. “I’m hungry, we’ll go get something to eat. You probably haven’t had a vegetable in twenty-six hours.”

(She probably hadn’t but she wasn’t about to admit it.) “Thank you,” Tony said.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for the delay. it was my birthday this past weekend and i just had no time to write.

# B SIDE

Tony wasn’t hiding; he wasn’t contemplating throwing himself off the building but nonetheless he was thinking about falling. It was one of those things his body did to him, the muscle memory of wind rushing at his face, at his chest, the echoing shout of shock and fear that rattled out of his chest. It was (God, what was it?) three years since Loki had thrown him out of the window but it felt like yesterday this high up. It felt like it could have been just a few minutes ago, with his fingers curled in on themselves, his forearms against the rounded rail keeping him from falling. He’d designed this building to give him a good view, to let him see the city, to watch how it lived and breathed; but he couldn’t stop staring at how far down the ground was. 

Falling wasn’t so bad but maybe that was only because he’d never actually hit the ground. (Would that be so bad? It was hard to tell, not a lot of people left alive to share their thoughts on the direct consequences of jumping off a building this height.) Things like that got all jumbled up in his head. It left him feeling half-alive, because there was no part of him that wanted to jump and every part of him that felt like it wouldn’t be so bad if someone just came and pushed him.

Wasn’t that a silly thought? Wasn’t that just a knee-slapper? 

Here, more than anywhere, he had nothing but reasons to live. A whole building full of people that knew-and-respected the woman (he wasn’t) with his name. A husband, a team of friends. Oh yes, it was a beautiful little window in to the world how he could never have it. 

“I looked in the lab first.” The statement was as neutral as any opening line, a well-articulated warning to accompany the sturdy-set-footsteps that had come from the left. Tony looked sideways as Rhodey came to a polite stop three-and-a-half-foot away from him. He wasn’t at ease but faking it. 

“I was just getting some air,” Tony said. He straightened so he wasn’t leaning over the edge, so he wasn’t staring down (thinking how things may have gone if the Mark VII hadn’t met him just before he hit the ground). His fist caught the rail like an afterthought, gave him something to hold onto that felt solid-and-real as he looked at this perfect mirror of his best friend.

Rhodey nodded in exactly the way that meant he didn’t believe it for a second. “Do you have a minute?”

As far as Tony could tell he had nothing but minutes. “I always have a minute for a friend.” He pried his hand off the railing, wrapped it up in a fist and put it in his pocket so it wouldn’t get any ideas about hanging onto half-memories and half-intentions of jumping off buildings. “Are we friends?”

There were a lot of things to like about Rhodey (his loyalty, his intelligence, his humor), but the one thing that Tony liked the least was how cautious he could be, how stubborn and how he stood there right now squinting at him. “Are you Tony?”

“If I’m not, I’d have to be a damn good actor.” He’d have to be a genius with a script with the support of a small nation behind him. Altering JARVIS to make him recognize a strange man where his owner and creator had been would have taken (Tony was arrogant enough to think) a very concentrated effort and at least half a dozen of the best minds on the planet. But the attempt at sarcasm didn’t make Rhodey relax so Tony sighed, “yes. I’m Tony. Just not the Tony from here.”

“Steve believes you,” Rhodey agreed. He was still assessing, still taking it in, still making his determination. “Steve is reliably irrational about his wife. Like the people you see in the movies, the ‘if she were dead I would know it’ people. There’s almost no way you’d be able to trick him.”

That required no effort to believe. Tony shrugged. “But that’s not good enough for you?” He thumbed over his shoulder, nowhere in the direction of where he’d met Clint with the rest of the group yesterday. “Barton believed it. He said I looked just like her. Same bra size and everything.”

Rhodey didn’t smile but he wanted to. “I’ve known Tony for a long time. I thought,” and here he looked (sad), “I just thought I’d know when I looked at you.”

Yes, well, Tony just thought he would go to sleep and wake up in the same reality so sometimes people didn’t get what they wanted. “You want proof?” Tony shrugged that off, “as far as I can tell we’re—her and me—operating off the same script until about six years ago. So, assuming that’s true,” (what an assumption), “we met in 86? I was sixteen, you were eighteen?” 

“Yes, that’s right.” More telling the compulsive agreement was how Rhodey shifted on his feet as soon as the ages were mentioned. It hadn’t really robbed his Rhodey of any sleep, but Tony was willing to believe that the virginity of a sixteen-year-old-daughter was somewhat more of a precious commodity than a sixteen-year-old-son’s to Howard fucking Stark. “That’s not really going to convince me—”

“Of course, you didn’t know how old I was, or you wouldn’t have had sex with me. You’ve always been annoyingly moral.”

“We don’t talk about that,” Rhodey said.

“I know.” In his world it was a simple matter of college-years-experimentation and the ease and convenience of a friend and a fuck buddy. Rhodey’s aspirations had never exactly included being outed and their youthful indiscretions had never been important enough to bring up at parties. 

“Because of Howard,” Rhodey added. 

Of course. Tony snorted at that. “Well, not where I’m from. I probably would have had to hear about it every Thanksgiving, but he wouldn’t have cared. Just another thing for him to mention when he listed all my shortcomings as a person: so, Tony, still taking dick on the weekends? You know what,” and maybe it had been Howard, as much as anything, that had kept that dirty secret stuck in his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said before there was even time to get started. “Racism or sexism?”

“What?” Rhodey asked.

“The reason you don’t talk about it, the reason Howard wouldn’t have liked it? Racism or sexism?”

“Was Howard racist?” Rhodey asked. The words were genuinely startled, right out of his mouth, as if he hadn’t really taken a moment or two to think about it. (It was best not to spend too many moments thinking about what Howard Stark was or was not.)

“Well, he wouldn’t say he was. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were. Ever look at the company photos? Not a lot of variation in those faces.”

Rhodey put his hands up to stop the flow of words before it could get out of hand. “It was common knowledge on campus that nobody that wanted to stay alive should try to get involved with Ms. Stark.” 

Tony nodded. (Well, at least he had that advantage over her. At least his Father had never shown up at MIT to threaten all the boys and girls to stay away. No, Howard probably wouldn’t have bat an eyelash at all the women that had taken up a momentary space in Tony’s bed. Hell, he might even have approved.)

Rhodey hesitated, still trying to find something familiar and failing, “are we friends where you’re from?”

“Yes.” (Although, now and again, it was hard to imagine what Rhodey got out of the arrangement besides a great deal of frustration.) “Best friends if you believe in that,” if that wasn’t too juvenile, “not that I’ve got enough friends to bother nominating a number one. We’ve gotten off topic—let’s concentrate on the problem.” He clapped his hands together, watched Rhodey’s suspicious face grow every so slightly disappointed. Or maybe it wasn’t disappointed, maybe it was like Natasha’s straining to stay friendly when all it was managing was concerned. “What would Colonel James Rhodes believe? What would we both believe?” Him and Rhodey, him and _her_. (Wasn’t that funny, didn’t it almost feel like he’d already had this conversation once. Maybe she’d had it, in the other world, with his Rhodey.) 

“I’m just not sure there is anything you coul—”

Tony snapped his fingers, “the funvee? That’s something only we would know. Everyone else that heard it is—” (Dead.) “The hum-drum-vee is back there. I never told anyone. I bet she didn’t either.”

Rhodey almost smiled, like it was a fond memory, like it was something worth smiling over. Getting attacked by terrorist didn’t qualify as a good time to him, but the way Rhodey started relaxing under his clothes made him smile back. The way Rhodey nodded, how he said, “alright,” was almost like agreeing. “You look like shit, Tony.”

Tony smiled. “Well,” he had no follow up to that. He had no end to the sentence, no idea of what he meant to say. “It’s been a long week.” 

“This has to be,” Rhodey paused, “a lot.”

That was an understatement. Tony slid his hands back into his pockets and shrugged. 

Rhodey glanced back at the building, at the people in it, and then over at him. “Want to go get breakfast? I’ll buy since you’re broke.” Then he smiled. 

“I left my wallet in my other universe,” Tony said. That made Rhodey smile, like he wanted to laugh, like he wanted to be familiar and easy with him. “I could eat.” (He could stand to be away from here. To be out in the world where nobody looked at him with their smiles stretched out of shape.) “If you think they’d let me go.”

“I’m sure they would,” Rhodey assured him. “Come on. I’ll take you to her favorite place, see if you have the same taste in breakfast food.” 

It was easy to agree, to follow, to wallow in this moment of easy.

# A SIDE

Nobody had ever accused Tony of sleeping in. (Except Steve, who could not be counted because he was superhuman among a pool of regular human data points.) Even when she had been younger (and drinking, and partying, and compartmentalizing her feelings into neat little boxes stacked on shelves, and sleeping around) she couldn’t manage a good sleep. Call it _an early bird gets the worm_ or boarding school habits but one way or another, Tony Stark was awake by seven. 

Except here, in this awful universe, when she was awake at five-oh-nine, sitting on the side of the bed with her bare feet on the floor and both her hands covering her face. She’d mastered an artful escape from a full bed years ago, but age and lack of necessity had slowed her to a crawl. There wasn’t much of a reason to rush away from Pepper anyway; if there was anyone in this miserable hellhole that understood what Tony Stark really was, it would be Pepper. 

The only danger in staying was the starvation on her skin, the longing just under the top layer like an ache that she couldn’t soothe. That _need_ to worm her way under her husband’s stupid thin blanket, to wriggle her fingers under his modest undershirt, to lay her cheek on his chest and absorb the warmth and the nearness of him. Now-and-again (more and more often) there was nothing at all sexual in the way she craved Steve’s body against hers. It was a brand new drug, a whole new itch she hadn’t realized she had, that desire to have his skin on hers and to luxuriate in it. 

There was no pretense and no expectation in the way Steve touched her, how easily he folded his arm around her, how his fingers brushed her hair. He was content to lay with her in the evenings, to let her lay on him, or against him or sit behind him and slip her hand into the neckline of his shirt. He was at ease with her hands on him. “Fuck,” she whispered into the cool air, let her hands run down her arms, let her whole body shiver for want of something to brush against. 

“Mm?” Pepper hummed from behind her.

“Nothing,” Tony whispered, “stay asleep.” She got up, grabbed a throw off the chair by the bed and excused herself. It was colder in the lab than it was in the bedroom, but there was more space and less expectation of comfort. She ate blueberries she found stashed by the drink fridge in the back as she sat cross-legged and watching the morning news. 

Celebrities and politics and charities. The morning programs wanted everyone to have a good day, so they filled up the space with fun stories about frazzled men-and-women with too many babies and kids that survived cancer. There were handsome men in nice suits selling their movies and pretty girls with crossed legs deflecting questions about their private lives. 

In between the fluff, and the special interest stories, there was a mention or two of greater disasters. _Efforts continue_ were the words they used. _Efforts continue to ease the suffering of the citizens of Sokovia_. But a quick google search and an easy calculation proved that left to its own devices, Sokovia didn’t stand a chance in hell of maintaining itself as a country. It was poor, and it was _failing_. Already crippled by the wars that were waged on all sides, it certainly couldn’t manage to heal itself and maintain independence. 

(What was it Steve said? Something about _acts of God_ and men in churches praying. Something about how not even the smartest, strongest, fastest man alive could manage to save the world. It all boiled down, sooner or later, to _shit happens_.)

Shit happened; but that didn’t absolve anyone of _trying_. (Steve never argued that; he just argued that shit could not be predicted and therefore could not be prevented and therefore would happen regardless.) 

She should be trying. She should be trying to _help_ ; she should be out there, up at the compound, laying it all out for Steven. Telling him exactly what hands needed to be shaken, which officials were the best ones to waste afternoons golfing with. (A little bit of wasted time went a long way with old men who traded respect and paparazzi pictures for worthwhile favors.) 

No. Tony couldn’t help here. Couldn’t look at Steven’s face without feeling her skin ache; couldn’t stand to listen to the sound of his voice without wanting to rip his tongue out. He was-and-wasn’t exactly the person she wanted. (Steven wasn’t wrong; wasn’t far off from the truth at all, looking at her face and asking her if she thought she was really helping. She wasn’t. She wasn’t even _trying_.)

Sokovia was bleeding to death and Tony was starting piss fights with a six-foot-baby. 

“Friday,” she said. “I need a plane.”

“Of course, sir. Where will we be going?”

“Sokovia.” She leaned forward far enough to pick up the badge that Pepper had given her. It was an all-access sort of thing, something that would give her almost unlimited access to every aspect of Tony Stark’s vast empire. She could get everything but the money. “When’s the soonest we can leave?”

“Seven PM, sir.”

“Good, make it happen.” The face in the photograph on the badge was smiling; the same blank smile Tony had learned as a child. “Do we have any friends in Sokovia? Any contacts?”

“I do not believe so, sir.”

No, of course they didn’t. That didn’t matter as much. Tony was good at making friends; nearly as good at making them as she was at alienating them. She stood up, all set to go and pack a bag, and found Pepper standing not very far away at all, holding two cups of coffee and one hell of a frown. “Oh,” was _dripping_ with sarcasm, “were you coming to tell me?”

No. “I can’t sit here,” Tony said. (Just look at what she was doing to the Avengers with her half-assed efforts. It was a twenty-minute drive to punch Steven in the dick, and that sort of proximity invited disaster.) 

“And what should I tell them you’re doing? What should I say when they call to ask why we sent a private plane to Sokovia? When they ask what your credentials are? What you’re over there to do?”

“Tell them I’m there to assess the recovered tech, that I _am_ an expert in Stark Tech.” She was, in fact, an expert. “Tell them I’m there to see how Stark Industries can help. I don’t care what you tell them. Tell them I _am_ Tony Stark.” 

Pepper handed her the coffee mug with a polite violence. She wasn’t amused when she looked at the news, but she just sighed. “We aren’t telling them you are Tony Stark. I’d rather we didn’t ever have to tell them you’re Tony but if it comes to that I’d like to have a reliable story.” She sipped her coffee and looked from the news to Tony. “How are you going to hide the arc reactor?”

“I can make a cap to hide the glow.”

“So, you’re not going to try to figure out how to get back? You couldn’t figure it out in three days so it’s not something that can be solved?” Her hands were folded around her mug as she leaned against the desk. The words were perfectly pleasant, hiding that hard edge of challenge buried in them.

“I think best when I’m busy,” Tony said. (Busy and away from here, away from instant replays of other-Tony’s stupid life making her angrier-and-angrier.)

Pepper hummed. She shrugged, “it’s not like I could stop you.” Her smile was sad (not angry) just before she shook her head and added, “I need to get dressed. I’ve got a full day. I’m sure you’ve got to pack.”

# A SIDE

It was much easier to show Maria Hill the footage than go through the trouble of trying to figure out how to phrase ‘Tony has been replaced by a female Tony’ in a way that seemed believable. As a rational minded woman, Maria would believe what she saw (maybe) but she might argue about how Steve had known just by looking at the woman named Tony Stark that she was telling the truth.

“So,” Maria said in the static space between watching Ms. Stark wake up in Mr. Stark’s bed and the footage of the same Ms. Stark sitting in the interrogation room. “You didn’t want to tell me on the phone that Tony is a woman now?”

“From another universe,” Steve added. “Apparently one where she is the leader of the Avengers.”

Maria nodded. She was quiet while she watched the video, raised her eyebrows at how easily Tony deflected Natasha’s attempts to coax answers from her. Watching it _now_ , it really was something to see. Very few people were capable of completely shutting down Natasha’s attempts but Tony made it seem effortlessly. “What are we doing about this?” 

“It’s not a priority.”

Maria Hill didn’t laugh but turn her head to stare at him with disbelief so palpable that it may as well been a slap to the face. It snuck into her voice as she said, “so we’re not worried that our Tony has been replaced?” She must have seen Tony flip the table out of the corner of her eye because she turned back to look at the screen and took a moment to appreciate the sight of Tony throwing a chair at Steve. “This isn’t a concern?” she asked. “This seems like it should be a concern.”

“It’s a concern. It’s not a priority. Right now, the focus needs to be on how we can help Sokovia and the Avengers.” 

“She just punched you in the face,” Maria pointed out. But it wasn’t outrage, it was almost pride, almost like saying: I approve. “Did she say she broke your arm?”

“Yes.”

“How?” Maria was eying him with suspicion. “I’ve seen you go through walls like nothing. You jumped out of a building and landed on a shield. You drove a motorcycle into a jet. You were frozen for seventy years.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “It was a small fracture, it healed. Is it important how?”

“Yes.”

Arguing how it wasn’t important would have taken more time than saying, “she attacked the compound and during the fight she grabbed the shield and pulled it.”

Maria stood like a soldier, (maybe she had been one). With her arms crossed over her chest like that, she was as much a disapproving Mother as she was a man in uniform. For a moment she was quiet and then she said, “that doesn’t sound like luck, Steve.”

It hadn’t been luck. Not with those words, not with the tone of her voice, not with how she looked at him (even now, just yesterday) as if she knew all the questions and all the answers and there was simply nothing he could do to catch up with her. “She was upset. Right now there are bigger problems—she can work on how to get home on her own, we need to figure out how to get ahead of the news.”

Maria didn’t believe him for a minute. “I’ll need a staff.”

“I thought you would.”

“I also need to know exactly what you want me to accomplish,” that was asking for more than Steve could wrap his head around. “I’ve been on the ground in Sokovia, there’s not a lot that the Avengers are equipped to do that would be helpful. There’s no bad guys,” that was ever so slightly sad, “there’s just a lot of—” Her impassive face slipped just a bit, she looked impatient, “there’s a lot of need. The best thing we can do for Sokovia is get the attention off the politics of the disaster and more onto the relief efforts.”

“How do we do that?” (He had an idea from how she was eying him, what she was going to suggest, even before she suggested it.) It must have shown on his face, like a tick in his jaw, and the memory of being a running joke in his own life. “I’d rather not put on tights.”

“That would certainly get some charitable donations,” Maria agreed. “America’s changed,” was not something he hadn’t noticed, “we don’t put our superheroes in tights anymore. Spectacle always works, though. If you want to get the media on your side, getting your face out there, making friends with the right people? Maybe picking up a motorcycle with a girl on it on TV, that would go a long way.”

Steve didn’t sigh. It filled him up from the inside, but he didn’t let it out. There was no point in sighing. “I’d prefer the options that don’t make me look ridiculous.” But also, “I’ve asked Rhodey to assist however he can with Tony. He’s got more experience than anyone at guiding the press’ opinion of Tony.”

“Ok,” Maria said. “What exactly do we want the press’ opinion to be?” 

“That he’s not responsible for Ultron.”

“Someone has to be responsible for Ultron,” Maria said. There was no arguing that. “Things like that don’t just happen—someone built him, someone set him loose. We can’t clear Tony of it if we don’t give them someone new to blame. The best we can hope for is distracting them.”

There were people to blame, plenty of people that had worked all together to make it happen. Loki who brought the scepter, Dr. List who used it to turn people into lab experiments, Wanda and Pietro who defended Ultron and let him escape— The world was filling up with people to blame for Ultron but Steve was struggling to find anyone he wanted to offer up as a singular offender. “Hydra,” he said. “They we working toward it.”

“What are we going to tell them about Wanda?” she asked.

“That she’s one of us.”

Maria looked like she felt sorry for him. (But she was like Tony, always trying to complicate simple ideas. Steve didn’t owe the world an explanation just because it wanted one. He didn’t have to justify his choice just because people were looking. A man could go crazy living like that, always under a microscope, always rehearsing excuses in his head.) “I’ll get to work. But this,” she motioned at the screen, at Tony caught in midmotion, recoiling from punching Steve in the face, “this needs to be a priority too. _Our_ Tony can be a pain in the ass but at least we know where he stands. Ignoring a stranger with Tony’s intelligence and this level of anger won’t end well for anyone.”

(Mostly, just for him.) “I know,” he said. 

“So, you’re handling it?”

Sure, he was. As long as he was available for getting punched and talked down to, it seemed reliable enough that she’d show up to deliver.

# B SIDE

The nightmare was soft as caterpillars, creeping down the back of his neck, whispering down his arms to the palm of his hands. It could have been sheets or pillows or anything caught in the clench of his fingers, but the nightmare was bright-white-light reflection of white porcelain. It was the gentle swish of bubbles over the lip of the tub, the phantom reality of his wife struggling.

He woke up to the rapid-rapid-beat of her heart through her ribs, felt it in is own chest. He woke up with a half-shout, and his hands reaching out. There was no telling what he was grabbing for, no telling what he was screaming only a minute ago. There was only the unrelenting brightness of the day and the ragged-drag of his breath in and out of his aching throat. 

“Captain, do you require medical attention?”

“No,” he said before ambulances could be called. But his skin was coated in sweat and his heart was thrumming harder now than it had since the super serum had worked. (Funny how he remembered that, funny how the sensation of gasping for breath was so familiar no matter how long ago it really was.) His hair was dripping, hanging across his forehead as he wiped his face and pulled his legs free from the sheets. 

“Would you like me to call Ms. Stark, sir?”

Yes. He’d very much like to call Ms. Stark. He’d very much like her to stop playing around. It wasn’t too much to ask of her, to find a miracle in the nonsense of facts and figures. Jane was copying him in on her theories, summarizing what she was working on in carefully worded sentences. It didn’t matter how she made it simple for a layman, he still didn’t understand most of it. He understood the end result: there was still no explaining what happened. But Jane had stopped an apocalypse with a collection of tripods and a little help, so Steve was willing to put his full faith in her.

“No, Jarvis,” Steve said. He rubbed his hands against his face and took a moment to breath. The nightmares were under his skin, wriggling around beneath the surface. “Where is Tony?” he asked.

“Mr. Stark is having breakfast with Colonel Rhodes, sir.”

That was good. Steve stood up and looked back at the damp spot he’d left in the bed. (Might have been best she wasn’t there. Might have spared him all the comments she would have made about wet spots and expensive sheets.) He pulled the blankets and sheets off and threw them on the floor. There were more in the linen closet, but the bed needed to air out and he didn’t care enough to replace them. 

A shower did nothing to calm him down. He spent half a minute in the mirror, scratching the stubble growing in on his cheeks, thinking about and making no choice about employing a razor. He dressed in casual clothes, made for running maybe, and grabbed his sketch book as he headed for the communal kitchen. 

Bruce was sitting at the table reading the newspaper with his glasses on, looking entirely at peace with a little glass of water waiting at his elbow and a plate of crumbs just beyond the reach of his hand. “Morning,” he offered (at eleven thirty, long after the real morning had come and gone again). “How’d you like the—uh, what was the flavor this time?”

“Banana nut.” There had been a second one. “Peanut butter? I thought the peanut butter one didn’t taste as much like dirt, but I just can’t get used to bananas. They don’t taste like anything.”

“I didn’t like the peanut butter one,” Bruce picked up his glass and sipped it, set it down again and glanced over the top of his paper at the empty doorway Steve had only just come through. He seemed puzzled by it, and then a smile broke on his face. Bruce smiled for half-a-dozen reasons, none of them ever quite qualifying as amusement. It was just a place holder on his face, a method of maintaining his human skin. 

“She’s not coming,” Steve said. He pulled the milk out of the fridge and poured a glass. The cabinets were always fully stocked, with everything any of them had ever admitted to having eaten (even in passing) but all the food looked like mulch to him. The prospect of cooking it or being forced to eat it made something in the pit of his stomach roll over on itself. The milk was sour in his gut, but it was better-than-nothing. 

Bruce had to turn in the seat to look over his shoulder at Steve, he pulled his glasses off, looked unsure about how he wanted to proceed. “I read the—latest update that Jane sent. I was waiting for Tony, I didn’t know if he had access? If he was reading them too.”

That didn’t matter. This Tony was drowning on land. This Tony moved like a walking ghost, always flinching at shadows. Steve took another drink of milk and frowned at the glass (the endless glass, that seemed as if it were refilling itself). “He said he doesn’t know how to get home.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. This wasn’t his field: universe-swapping or offering comforting platitudes. But he always _tried_. “I’m sure she’ll figure it out. She always figures it out.” Bruce smiled hopefully, motioned at nothing in particular, waving his folded over glasses in the air, “I’ve never met anyone as smart as Tony. I’ve met a lot of smart people.”

Steve nodded along, just keeping pace with the words, “it’s not her that I’m worried about.” 

Bruce’s small smile fell. “Yeah,” he said again. 

Steve rinsed the cup and left it in the sink. (Tony hated dishes in her sink. She _hated_ them intensely.) “I’m going for a run,” he said.

“Outside?” Bruce asked.

“Sure,” Steve agreed. “It’s a nice day.” (He had no idea if it were a nice day or not.) 

Bruce waited until he was at the doorway before he said, “are you okay, Steve?” As if he hadn’t intended to ask it at all, as if he had been reminding himself not to ask the whole time he sat there. In the end, he simply had to. “I mean—what happened in Sokovia?”

No. He was off-center, he was carrying around a nightmare made of stringy bits that was floating in his chest like a jellyfish, that was crawling out of his skull on a hundred tiny legs. It wouldn’t have been so bad, it wouldn’t have stuck with him, it wouldn’t have mattered, but it felt like Wanda had reached her arm down his throat and pulled that fear from his gut. It hadn’t come from him but it _felt_ like it had. “I think Tony was right, you shouldn’t go anywhere near her.”

“It’s that bad?”

“It’s not good,” Steve said. He paused just long enough to be sure Bruce didn’t have any other last-minute questions before he went on his way. The trip down to the lobby was quick enough, the sidewalk was welcoming in the way infinite possibility always was. He could run for miles, for hours, for days if he had to. He never had to come back here, and that possibility felt like the first relief he’d had in days.

(He had to come back, of course he did) but the possibility, the _possibility_ was the important part.

# B SIDE

Breakfast was lunch at the end of a twenty-minute drive. They sat at a tall table with handsome wood chairs and made idle conversation. (I’ve never been here/I wonder if they have one in your world/What’s good here?) 

Tony found a pen tucked between the condiments and the salt, Rhodey produced a slip of paper out of his pocket. “So,” he said as he drew the tic-tac-toe board on the top edge of the paper. “You’re an Avenger?”

“I work with the Avengers,” Rhodey said. That was a fine line. “I haven’t made the permanent move yet.” He pulled a pen out of his pocket too and leaned forward to write an R into the empty middle of the hashmark board Tony had only just finished drawing. His smiling face was perfectly innocent of all crimes. “Whoever draws the board goes second,” was no rule they had ever established. 

“You’re full of shit,” Tony said. (But fondly.) He tipped the paper so it was at an angle. (He thought better when it was at an angle,) and ignored the way Rhodey groaned to himself. “Did we ever play chess?”

“Checkers.”

“I’m still the defending champion?”

“You wish,” Rhodey scoffed, “you’ve only got eight options, Tony. Pick one.”

He picked a corner and Rhodey picked the center. They’d played the game so often it was muscle memory, they could have done it with their eyes closed. “So,” he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to say next, but even he was surprised by, “how the hell did she end up marrying Steve?” 

“He’s a good guy,” was by-rote-defense. (Tic-tac-toe was more important.) He scribbled his R on the board and looked up in time to thank the waitress for the drinks. There was the whole matter of pulling the paper off the straw and disapproving of the soda Tony had ordered (he was disapproving of the lack of liquor in his soda as well) and sipping the water to make sure it tasted like water before Rhodey could add anything. “I had my doubts. Steve was insufferable when we first met him. She hated him, every time she went to see him she came back yelling about how she couldn’t stand him, about how he wasn’t worth the time it took to melt the ice. She used to call him a test tube baby. If you’d asked me in 2011 if she was going to marry him I would have assumed it was a joke.”

Tony declared he first game a draw and motioned at the paper so Rhodey, who made up rules that nobody played by, could draw the next board. “That sounds familiar.” Although he hadn’t had the time or space to express any real anger at Steve. It was a whirlwind of a week, between discovering the existence of real-life Norse Gods to getting Shawarma in the aftermath of an alien invasion. “What changed?”

“New York,” Rhodey said. He waited for Tony to claim the middle spot on the tic-tac-toe board before he picked his own square. “Everything changed in New York, for everyone, for the world, I think. But especially for her. Between me and you, I think she asked Steve to leave SHIELD just to take an asset away from Fury but she says that without a figurehead there wouldn’t have been the Avengers. Tony—you, I guess, too—built weapons but she never used them. With the exception of the Iron Man armor and even that isn’t used in war. Steve has been to war, Steve has led more men into a fight than he managed to bring home. She needed that experience, she needed a man that people would follow.”

There was no denying that men would follow Steve. 

“Steve needed a place in the world,” Rhodey said. “She loves him. I don’t know how she got there but she loves him.”

Tony motioned at the tic-tac-toe game he won (with very little effort), “are you even trying?”

“You asked me a question,” Rhodey countered. “You purposefully distracted me. That’s a despicable tactic.”

“If it works,” Tony countered. He drew a new board and Rhodey gave him the stink eye as he signed his R in the center square. “I didn’t meet Steve in 2011. I met him in Germany when he was fighting Loki.”

Rhodey frowned at that, “why didn’t you meet him? He was part of the Avenger’s Initiative.”

“I wasn’t,” Tony said. “They sent Natasha to assess me and I was—” (What was the best word to use here?) “Misbehaving. To be fair I was dying, or I thought I was. I feel that anyone in my position would misbehave if they could. Anyway, I wasn’t invited to join the band until after Loki came through the Tesseract.”

The appetizer arrived with a puff of steam and a few extra plates to divide the potato wedges (and cheese and bacon) evenly between them. Rhodey was still staring at him in unmoderated disbelief, “from palladium poisoning?”

“Yes.”

That didn’t make the outrage on Rhodey’s face any less outraged. Whatever he was going to say (perhaps something about how things had progressed differently in this universe) he traded for, “don’t take all the sour cream. I’m serious, Tony. You have to share.”

He hadn’t taken it all, but he did take more than half. Tony ate a few bites and wiped his fingers on a napkin, sat back in the chair with the pen still held in his hand. He could have been in his very own world, trading barbs and stares with his very own Rhodey. “What happens to Steve now? He got put in the time-out room, he’s out now, is he back in charge?”

“I’m not involved with the details. I wasn’t at the meeting this morning so I can only guess, but if they follow procedure—and they usually do—I don’t think they’ll reinstate Steve. I was on the plane, whatever got into his head, it got deep. The man’s been compromised by an outside force in the same week his wife goes missing? They’re not going to let him near a combat situation unless it’s an apocalypse.”

Wasn’t that funny. Wasn’t that just fucking hilarious. Wasn’t that just a cherry on a big heaping cake of shit. Tony wasn’t laughing but shaking his head, feeling like the world was getting too small again, and then again that it was tilted on the wrong axis. (No, he was feeling like it had all happened for _no reason_ that every choice and every mistake, that every death and every tragedy that followed his every choice could have been _avoided_.) “They think I can help them,” he said.

Rhodey tipped his head, leaned forward a bit, inviting an intimacy that didn’t exist here. “Can you?”

“It’s not my world.” It wasn’t his to fuck up; it wasn’t his to rip to shreds. It wasn’t his because his was a dusty crater and thousands of displaced and dead. It was a constant newsreel of his mistakes playing like a soundtrack. His Avengers were a group of strangers and his Steve wasn’t a _good man_ or even a _bad one_. (Maybe he was, Tony wouldn’t know.) “I don’t know that it would be a good idea to say too much. Paradoxes,” he waved his hand, “who knows what kind of damage I could do if I say to the wrong thing.”

“Yeah,” Rhodey said. He didn’t argue the point. “We shouldn’t risk paradoxes.”

# A SIDE

There hadn’t been enough time between mounting the attack on the Hydra base and stopping the train in Seoul to form any kind of opinion (good or bad) about Wanda. Steve tried not to bring home battle scars (and it was easy when his skin always healed seamlessly). War had been easier in its own way; war broke down a man’s priorities, it drew a line, it said all that stand here are good and all that oppose are not. 

There was no line between him and Wanda, there was no cause that divided them. Standing on the same lawn as her, watching her manipulate the energy that glowed pink-and-red between her spread fingers, he didn’t feel anything. There wasn’t fear, there wasn’t anger, there wasn’t revulsion. Vision was in a constant state of wonder when he looked at Wanda, always on the verge of speaking whenever she came close enough to be seen. He could talk for hours about the possibilities of her abilities, and about what potential she had. 

Tony was afraid of her. Bruce had hated her. Clint hadn’t cared—good or bad or indifferent, longer than it took to defeat Ultron. Natasha considered her a useful ally and nothing more or less.

But Steve didn’t _feel_ anything. Wanda had simply made sense to him. They had been looking for a way to make a difference, for a chance to become _something_ in a world that viewed them as powerless, that viewed them as nothing. (But was that what she was?) 

“You are distracted,” Wanda said.

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m here.”

Wanda let her hands fall at her sides, “no. You are not.” He didn’t know if she could peel back the layers of his skull to see what he was thinking, maybe it was like the energy woven between her fingers, maybe he would see it happen. Or maybe he wouldn’t. “What are you thinking?”

Steve sighed, shook his head, looked at the grass beneath his feet. “I was just thinking,” about Tony. “We should keep working,” he said. He looked across the field at Vision idly floating, taking shots at a series of targets set up at varying lengths. Before (like before Tony) he had set up the week of basic exercises as a starting point. He understood Thor, Clint and Natasha’s strengths. He even knew approximately what Tony was capable of doing (but he kept getting surprised on that front) but he didn’t know what Vision could do. He had no idea what Wanda was capable of. Standing here now, half watching, he could swear that he’d retained any information at all about their abilities. 

But Wanda didn’t lift her hands again, she fidgeted, stood still looking across the yard at Vision (who must have felt her looking). She smiled at him, just a little, before she said, “I do not like Tony Stark.” (A greater understatement had never been spoken.) “I think it is not always his fault. I thought it was. Sometimes I still think it is. He has been the monster in my dreams for many years; it would be easy to say he destroyed my country as he destroyed my family.”

He wasn’t certain what she wanted him to say so he said nothing.

“But,” Wanda conceded, “vengeance did not make me happy. I brought his nightmares to life for him,” she raised her hand and the energy flowed brilliant and red in and out of the spaces between her fingers. “I set him on the path that brought us here. Tony Stark did not build Ultron on his own.”

“There weren’t a lot of other people in that room,” Steve said.

“Maybe there should have been,” Wanda suggested. “Maybe he would not have been if I had not made him afraid. Maybe it was the Mind Stone. Maybe you would have stopped Ultron in Johannesburg if my brother and I had not been there.”

Steve sighed, (felt a headache starting that would never fully form). “None of those maybes happened, what happened is the same thing that always happens. Stark does what he wants, the rest of us get to read about in the papers if we’re lucky, if we’re not out there,” he motioned at the field and the world beyond it, “having to pick up whatever disaster he made. If it hadn’t been you it would have been something else. At the end of the day?” and this was the bit that nobody seemed to care about, “Stark doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”

Vision gently lowered himself to the ground to the left of them. He was non-judgmental as he took in the scene, and perfectly diplomatic when he announced, “Captain Rogers, I believe Ms. Hill is looking for you.” (It was just as likely that Maria Hill was caught with the sudden urge to locate him as it was Vision simply wanted to give him the excuse to leave). “Wanda,” was fondly spoken, “perhaps we could work together?”

“Yes,” Wanda agreed.

Steve took the exit Vision offered him, went back inside to find Maria Hill on the phone with three separate computer screens running three separate programs. It didn’t look like she’d had even a half-second to express her desire to see him, and the way she glanced over her shoulder with a confused tilt to her eyebrow suggested she wasn’t even aware she’d asked for him. “Just a minute,” she said to the person on the phone, and pulled it away from her ear. “Can you sing?” she asked.

“What?”

“Can you sing?” 

“I’ve never tried,” Steve said. More importantly than that, “why?”

Maria didn’t look like she wanted to tell him, but she said, “I’m exploring our options,” as if that explained anything. Whatever was being said on the phone was more important Steve standing right behind her, so she was back at it.

# A SIDE

Natasha was in the backseat of the car Pepper called to take Tony to the airport. The driver didn’t seem to realize that Natasha was one more person in the backseat than he’d been tasked to deliver, but then again, the small matter of convincing a man she was meant to occupy the space wouldn’t have taken Nat more than thirty seconds to manage. (Tony had always appreciated how brilliantly Natasha used her assets. It was truly inspiring to watch.) “Hi,” she said as she pulled the glasses off her face.

“Driver,” Tony called, “we can go.” Once the car started moving, she turned so her shoulder was against the back of the seat and her full attention was on Natasha’s artfully relaxed body. (They’d been here once, when they were strangers, Natasha playing at seduction while Tony tried to distract herself from how she was dying.) “Hi,” Tony said. “Did you get tired of pulling the strings behind the scenes?”

“I haven’t been pulling strings,” but the way her hand was resting on her thigh seemed to suggest she’d pull any string Tony asked her to. (And Tony never figured out how she did it; no matter how long she watched Nat work, she’d never figured out the secret.) “Do I pull strings where you’re from?”

“Steven is a very capable boy when he needs to be, but he is not capable of thinking too many things at the same time.” Tony rested her own hand in her lap and tried not to pay too much attention to the trackers under her skin. (Funny how she only felt them sitting next to the people wearing the faces of her friends. Funny how she hadn’t cared about them all night with Pepper. But here, and now.) “It requires a certain amount of sophistication to decide to send Rhodey and to make them both think it was Steven’s idea.”

Natasha shrugged. “I don’t know that it wasn’t his idea.”

Tony snorted. She thought about taking the invitation to lean into Natasha’s space, thought about seeing how far they were going to play this out. They’d gotten close once or twice in their world, always with the taste of blood in their mouths. There was no contest which of them would win if they really tried (Natasha would, hands down, in fifteen seconds or less) but it was more fun to pretend. “It must get confusing, having to explain to everyone how they had a great idea.”

“I’ve got a great idea for you,” Natasha said. 

“I’m sure you do.” (This was fun, almost.) “I’ve got a couple of good ones myself. But please,” Tony motioned into the open space of the backseat, “you can go first.”

“Stop interfering with the team.” Natasha’s smile didn’t falter, the tilt of her body didn’t change. The pulled free button of her shirt didn’t stop straining to hold in her breasts. Nothing changed at all except the sudden frostiness of the air.

“I haven’t done a thing,” Tony assured her. If she’d been wearing pearls she would have clutched them. She had no pearls, only an arc reactor that was cool under her palm when she touched it. 

“Liar,” Natasha said. Then she shifted, half turned, bent her leg so it was across the seat between them and her elbow was over the back. She wasn’t smiling, or flirting because they’d shifted tactics. “You set him up.”

“I didn’t.”

“I should have taken it into consideration,” Natasha said. (She really should have taken it into consideration.) “That Rhodey would do anything for Tony. But, I wasn’t expecting you to even try. Tony wouldn’t have.”

“No _he_ wouldn’t have,” she agreed. “Ms. Romanoff, I do appreciate seeing you,” and Tony glanced down at the inviting spread of Natasha’s button down shirt, stretched so artfully across her breasts, “I’ll give you nine out of ten stars—you would have gotten the tenth one if you’d kissed me, that would really have tied the whole seduction attempt together—but I have prior engagements. If you came to say something, maybe we could skip the lead in.”

“Call Rhodey and tell him to stop.”

Yes, she wasn’t going to do that. Tony smiled. “No.” But also, “driver, could you pull over up here, we need to let Ms. Romanoff out she’s got a very important appointment.” (Unless she murdered Tony in the back seat of the rented car. Which seemed as likely as anything.) “Don’t look at me like that. Rhodey is making his own choices, I only asked him why there was no man on the news protecting his friend.”

“Stop poking Steve,” was the most honest threat that Natasha had ever spoken to her, and the closest. There was violence in the words and the pretty white show of Natasha’s teeth. “He’s trying to build this team and he can’t do it if you’re in the way blocking his every attempt to move forward. Tony _left_ the Avengers.”

There was certainly a valid point or two in there. “Stop protecting him. You’re not doing yourself or the world any favors setting him up to think he’s infallible,” Tony said. The car pulled to a stop and she smiled, motioned at the door. “I believe this is your stop.”

But the moment dragged, Natasha stared at her like she was working out exactly what had to be done. In the end she said, “I’d be careful. This isn’t the world you’re from, things aren’t the same here. You have no friends, but you don’t have enemies either.” Natasha leaned in, pressed their lips together in the briefest, least sincere kiss she’d ever received, and then Natasha smirked as she added, “ _yet_.” 

Tony should have let Natasha go, (Tony should have let a lot of things go), but she wrapped her hand around Natasha’s arm and pulled her to a stop when she tried to leave. “Steven doesn’t believe he can fail, you can’t follow a man who doesn’t believe he can fail.”

“That’s rid—”

“No, it’s not. He’ll tell you knows you may not win, he can give a great speech, he can inspire a hundred men to run into a burning building. It’s important to have a leader that can inspire, it’s important to believe your leader is capable of anything. That kind of thing keeps men motivated and happy, but _Captain America_ is an ideal and Steven Grant Rogers is just a man— Where I’m from, he knows the difference, where you’re from? He’s buying into his own propaganda. You saw it too, in Sokovia.”

There it was, just a flinch, as quick as the blink of an eye, and gone again. Natasha _had_ seen it. “You don’t know Steve.”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe not.” She leaned back into her seat, let her hand loosen and fall away from Natasha’s arm. “But do you?” There was no answer to that, just a glare, a frown and Natasha sliding out of the car. She was gone in a second, mixing into a crowd and disappearing. “We can go,” Tony said to the driver. “I’ve got to catch a plane.”

# B SIDE

It was impossible to look casual with a cape. (And really, Steve considered himself lucky that the costume designer of the original Captain America travelling circus hadn’t taken a liking to the idea of tying a bedsheet onto his back. The tights had been enough of an embarrassment without the addition of tripping over a cape.) Thor always made a great attempt at casual, an attempt at inconspicuous, but he ended up leaning against a wall with his arms across his chest and Mjolnir dangling from his wrist. “Steve,” Thor said with great fondness. He leaned away from the wall, knocked Mjolnir against the wall (and dented it) and stepped on the edge of his cape in a way that stalled out his forward motion. For a moment, Thor was not the Prince of Asgard but a just a man that was incredibly annoyed. 

“Heading back to Asgard?” Steve asked. His shirt had fused to his skin with sweat. If Tony had been there she would have asked him why he ever bothered with the pretense of a thin layer of fabric. He’d meant to run for a hour or so, but he’d left at noon and he’d come back when the sky started going dark. 

“Yes,” Thor agreed. He turned just far enough to pull the cape up and held it over one of his arms (so it wouldn’t trip him again). “I must return the scepter before it can do any more harm. It is more dangerous than we thought.” But he couldn’t say why, and he possibly shouldn’t have said as much as he did. 

“You’re not going to take off from the hallway are you?” Steve asked. “You know she doesn’t like the burn marks.” Not that it mattered because she wasn’t presently here. (He had been thinking about that for hour, or two, long enough that the soles of his shoes had worn a bit thin.) All he wanted was a long shower, enough food to stop the screaming in his gut. (Milk had not, it turned out, been enough to sustain him.) But he couldn’t hit the elevator button because he was being looked at. 

“No,” Thor agreed. He smiled and motioned upward, “I can’t, there are too many floors. Hey,” he held out the hammer and nudged Steve with it, “are you well?”

Steve shrugged. “I’ve been better. I’ve been worse.” He rubbed the sweat in his hair, felt it slick between his fingers and tried not to grimace at it. “I should,” he motioned upward, “shower.”

“Yes,” Thor agreed. He didn’t immediately move out of the way though. He lingered directly in the way, waiting for some sign that things would be okay. That was what they did, the lingered, they watched, they offered shoulders and hands when it was necessary. “I have spoken to Jane,” Thor offered.

“Yeah.” It was an acknowledgement and a question. Maybe. Or maybe it was just a space holder in an awkward conversation. (Steve thought that Thor might have tried to hug him, might have been thinking about it as he indecisively rocked on his feet. A hug wouldn’t have been so bad. It wouldn’t have been bad at all.) 

“Sometimes things happen that cannot be explained immediately,” said the man who had lived for over a thousand years. “There is always a solution. While I am in Asgard I intend to ask,” (Loki, but Thor did not say his name here, not in New York, not on Earth, not in the middle of the Avenger’s tower), “if this has happened in the past, if there is a solution that we cannot see. Have faith,” Thor grasped Steve’s shoulder with his free hand and squeezed it. “We will find a solution.”

“Together,” Steve agreed.

“Yes,” Thor’s smile brightened. “Together.”

Steve smiled back. He’d gotten good at smiles with no feeling, he’d still been a novice in the art when he woke up from the ice but taking up shared space next to Tony Stark had taught him the importance of a good smile. The men with cameras loved them, the men with keyboards and endless words that wrote the news were nice to smiles. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m going up,” he motioned upward again. “Before this,” he plucked at the shirt stuck to his skin, “becomes permanent. Have a good trip.”

Thor always laughed at the sentiment, as if it were capable to complete an interdimensional trip poorly. His hand slid off Steve’s shoulder and he frowned at the tacky sweat that was stuck to his own skin before he wiped it across the tail of his cape. “Be well, Steve. Do not lose heart.” Then he strode away, still holding his cape in his arm. 

The day ended the way it began: with Steve, alone, looking at the bed he’d stripped the blankets off. The shower had melted the sweat off his skin but it hadn’t washed away the feeling of uneasiness. Standing at the end of the bed, wearing nothing but a fresh pair of sweats, there was no part of him that wanted to be _here_. 

This was the bed he shared with his wife, the one that had been hers before him. She’d made space in it for him, cleared out half the closet, half the dresser, half the room just for him to make a home. Without her, it was hollow. It was just another reminder.

He found a bag in the closet and he filled it with his clothes. He stuffed his sketchbook and his pencils into it (and he thought about his shield, safely tucked away in a secure room, just waiting for someone to decided he was sane enough to carry it). The building wasn’t quiet, no matter how late it was, but buzzing full of sound of still-working-parts. 

The private elevator was quiet, and empty, and it took him all the way down. It opened into the parking garage, to find Natasha leaning against the buttons to the left, looking not at all as casual as Thor had attempted. She said, “I saw you on the cameras. I’m not that good at reading people, Rogers.” 

“You aren’t?” was old banter.

“Well,” wasn’t an answer or the start of a new sentence. Natasha hugged him with both her arms across his shoulders, dragging him down. It was easy to hug her back (far too easy, far too welcome). She rubbed her hand up and down his back before she leaned away from him. “You’ll be in the old apartment?”

“She told me she’d keep paying the rent. I think,” he shrugged, “I think she figured we’d fight eventually. I guess that’s the—” 

“Dog house?”

“Couch,” Steve said. “I’ll be back.” 

Natasha nodded at him. “Of course, you will. I’m not worried.” But she was. Just beneath the calm of her smile, she was as worried as the rest of them. “Make sure you eat. I’m not attending another seminar on super serum and its effects on the human male just because you decided to go on a hunger strike. And she’ll know. She’ll take one look at you and she’ll know.”

“Fine,” Steve said. “I’ll eat.” He lifted his bag, took a step toward the motorcycle and turned enough to look at her sliding into the private elevator (the one she wasn’t technically supposed to have access to). He smiled at how Jarvis greeted her and she waved at him just before the doors slid shut. 

The apartment was as empty as the bedroom had been, with a stale smell of having gone too long without being lived in. There was dust on all the surfaces and no food in the fridge but at very least, the bed didn’t feel empty. There’d never been anyone but him to sleep in it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, this is super late or early depending on which Sunday you'd like to judge it by. i have general excuses (injuries, holidays, too much work and now I've got a head cold) but mostly I am sorry the chapter is so late. and I am NOT posting a chapter this upcoming Sunday but there will be one the week after on Dec. 3.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

# B SIDE

It had been difficult—yes. _Difficult_ but not _impossible_. (That was a funny word wasn’t it? _Im_ possible. There weren’t a lot of things that were truly, really, actually _impossible_. That Tony had learned in forty five years. Improbable. Unlikely. Difficult. But very rarely, if ever, truly _impossible_.) It was a matter of cabinets. 

Why had he built the Avenger’s tower with so many cabinets?

Design flaw aside, he had managed to locate the liquor after an exhaustive search. It had only been a matter of opening and closing the cabinets until he found what he was looking for. (One might say, if one were inclined, that he’d followed his nose. And one would not be entirely wrong. There was a refreshingly home-ish smell to scotch. Or any fine liquor. Pepper would have told him that people don’t equate the smell of alcohol with home and she meant _healthy_ , _normal_ people didn’t but Tony had taught himself how to be a man in between a sip of this and a drink of that. Fine liquor was an old friend. A reliable, trustworthy, sort of friend.) 

Trustworthy was another funny word. As far as he was concerned the very idea of trust was somewhat nebulous. He looked it up in the dictionary once or twice, (maybe, maybe he hadn’t) and as far as he was concerned the whole fucking concept was overrated. Then again it hadn’t always been that, because he must have (must _have_ ) trusted Obidiah at one point or another. He must have trusted the man to be the person he said he was, he one he acted like. Trust was thinking someone’s face matched their mind, so trust must have been an explosion on a rooftop. Trust was intentional blindness and that, well, _that_ was hysterical, really.

But reliable, oh reliable was the one that would sneak up and stab a man in the back. Because things were supposed to be reliable: things like _time_ , things like _space_ and yet here he was, drinking a well-hidden bottle of scotch out of a coffee mug with his back against a pane of glass he was trusting to hold him in. 

Reliable was a tricky sort of bitch; the kind of thing that funneled your thinking into grooves and left you utterly unprepared to react to things that couldn’t have been predicted. Reliable was thinking that Steve Rogers, your alternate-universe-husband, would still be in the same bedroom he’d been in that morning and finding the mattress naked and the bedclothes in piles on the floor.

Oh, reliable was a tricky bitch, always twisting around. 

(Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe Steve was what Steve had always been: reliably known to never let a bad situation get worse. A man out of time, always looking for the next thing he could be righteously offended about. Like naked beds and boys where girls had once been.)

Reliable had never, not ever, not once, been the sound of sock feet on the floor and the slow-steady approach of Natasha fucking Romanoff doing her very best to look neutral and friendly. She was sneaking up on tiptoes, with her hands where he could see them. Her face caught in a paradoxical disaster of pity and disapproval when she found him in a little pool of light. 

“I told him,” Tony motioned upward, toward Jarvis (another reliable feature of his life whose murder couldn’t have been predicted), “not to count it.”

Natasha nodded, ran her hands down her thighs as she worked out what she wanted to do. A lecture was brewing beyond her lips, but she bent her knees and slid down to sit next to him. Her fingers plucked the bottle out of his hand but only long enough to take a drink of it. “I was just thinking: a drink would be nice.” 

There was nothing nice about a drink. Reliable was a bitch and trust was a lie but a drink was a sturdy friend that fucked you exactly like you thought you wanted. Tony’s head was leaned back against the glass, his legs were spread out in front of him, his loose hands were pulling the bottle back over when it was offered. With his eyes closed, the world was fuzzy enough that he didn’t have to _think_ about how it was different and how it was the same. Everything was pleasantly numb, everything was happily neutral. “Where’s Steve?” just sort of snuck right out of his mouth.

“At his apartment,” Natasha answered. She wasn’t leaning against the wall but sitting with her legs crossed, picking at nothing under her fingernails. Her head was inclined, and her red hair was falling forward. In the low light, her pale face almost glowed. But her smile didn’t. 

“Oh,” Tony said. “Pepper still has her own apartment. We say its because it’s convenient, that we all need our own space—but,” he shrugged, “it’s an exit strategy. It’s important to know the exits.” He took another drink, considered how light the bottle had gotten and how much he’d regret it in the morning. “I used to know,” (no he hadn’t, not the ones that mattered), “I used to know when to use them.”

“Is her having her own apartment her exit strategy or yours?”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe it’s both. I didn’t ask her to give it up; she didn’t think it was a good idea.” He snorted, like a giggle crushed in between his teeth. “Sorry, that’s funny isn’t it? We’re _trying_. With me? It’s always trying, everyone tries. I try. _Trying_ is hard isn’t it?” He motioned at her with his free hand, “I mean, look at you. You’re _trying_ , at least where I’m from, you’re always _trying_ to be something. I don’t think,” and he shifted so his body was leaning forward, so he was squinting at her face, “I’ve ever seen your real face, Ms. Romanoff.”

Natasha smiled at him, “that’s very unfortunate, Mr. Stark.” (Yes, terribly unfortunate.) “But, it doesn’t surprise me. I have a lot of faces.” She pulled the bottle out of his hand and took another drink, grimaced at it and didn’t give it back. “You’re a fucking mess, Tony.”

He laughed at that. She didn’t laugh with him. “Sorry, that’s not funny.” He motioned at his own chest, “I thought I knew what kind of mess I was.” But look at this, look at _this_ world with it’s cogs and wheels and well-oiled pieces. Look at this fucking place.

“She’s not perfect,” Natasha said. “She works hard to have this.”

“Oh,” well, “I guess I don’t. I guess all the—” he slapped his hands back against the window to lever himself up off the ground. “—things I’ve been doing, I guess they aren’t work. Building the tower? Not work. Defending New York? Not _work_. Designing the suits, the gear, the AIs, making appearances and shaking hands isn’t work. Showing up to press conferences isn’t work because if it were work,” and he wasn’t sure how his voice had gotten so loud, “ _this_ Tony Stark _wouldn’t_ do it!”

Natasha didn’t move from where she was sitting and that was as ridiculous as him shouting was. She tipped the bottle up and took a sip of it, cocked her head and looked right at him. “I guess team work isn’t something that comes naturally to you either.”

“The Avengers aren’t much of a team where I’m from.”

“That’s very obvious.”

Tony frowned at her, she smiled back. “Give me back my liquor.”

Natasha did stand up then, a graceful single motion that took her from sitting with her legs crossed to standing directly in front of him. There was her face, and her smile, leaning in against him. There was her hand gripped around the neck of the bottle and her voice that said, “no.” She stepped back, turned away from him, “come on, I’ll help you find your bed.”

Tony snorted. “I’ve never been too drunk to find my own bed.” (But he didn’t have one, not here.)

# A SIDE

There were no direct flights into Sokovia. Not even the benefit of a private jet could have gotten her there. Or perhaps it could have, perhaps she just wanted a layover in a lap of luxury. She wanted the pleasing familiarity of a high-class hotel. A deep tub and a long hot bath did wonders to make a woman feel more at ease with her place in the world.

The hotel room asked nothing of her; it had no preconceived notions of what or who she was. It wasn’t troubled, concerned or saddened to see that she had take up a space former reserved for another. It didn’t care about where she’d come from, or where she was going. It was only concerned with this moment, these soft bubbles in this luxurious bath. 

But her thumb worried, it rubbed against the inside of her left ring finger, trying and failing to find a ring to spin. It kept meeting damp skin but that didn’t seem to stop it from trying. The anonymity and the lack of expectation didn’t extend to the inside of her skull. 

What she’d said to Pepper was true: she worked best when she was busy. She wasn’t busy here and all her thinking was about a well-stocked mini-bar and how sublime a decent drink would be. Alcohol was a terrible temptress with bright red lips that leaned against her ear and whispered filthy, wet promises that she’d never follow through with. Liquor was quicker, but it always left in the end.

(Was that why she quit it? Because she went to bed with bottles and woke up with hangovers? Every night she told herself, it would be the last night but every morning started with hair of the dog. Was that why she quit?)

“We gave it up,” she said to the ceiling. Jarvis wasn’t there to answer her; Friday (a passable imitation) wasn’t there either. It was only her own voice and the closed-in-echo of four walls, that had to pretend to care. “We are not drinking tonight.”

(But she wanted to.)

The bubbles were clouds on the water, and flirty kisses against her skin. She let her thumb worry at her ring finger, searching for and finding nothing. With her shoulders against the tub and her feet pressed against the other end, she closed her eyes.

Thoughts always came out of order: Happy’s presence at her elbow, the smell of his cologne and the vague warmness of his body just behind her. She could measure her sobriety by the nearness of his warmth. The less sober, the closer he got until he was all but snarling at men with conman smiles and women with glittering dresses. 

Maybe she should have apologized to him; written him a letter or sent a gift, something that said: I know you tried. I know you tried to protect me, I know I never let you. Because Happy _had_ tried, at every conference and every award and every public gathering, he’d been there with his body like a heated shadow, always making faces and subtle threats. Happy had protected her drinks and held her purse (when she had to have one) and waited for her just outside the bathroom. 

It was had been Happy, with fists like pink hams, that had picked her up in the long, quiet, days. Happy with all the strength in his arms and the unyielding loyalty that carried her back to safety. He sat at her bedside while she slept off too many drinks and he left her glasses of water for the morning after. 

Tony hadn’t wanted protection when she was twenty-five and furious. She’d wanted freedom and she’d been willing to trade _anything_ to get it. There was no virtue on earth (or in heaven) that meant more to her than the exhilarating thrill of climbing on a table with a pretty girl and a drink in her hands, knowing that _nothing_ mattered.

She was forty-five now, too old to crave carelessness, but here (and now) all she wanted was the _relief_ that oblivion gave her. Because her thumb was looking for the wedding ring that was sitting on her bedside table. 

“We’re not,” felt like it deserved a repeat, “drinking tonight.” She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself, how it felt like no matter what she said, no matter how resolved she was, no matter whether she took a drink or not, she’d already _lost_.

# A SIDE

The plan was multi-layered because, as Hill stressed to him standing at the end of a short table with the plan projected onto the screen behind her: 

“Despite Sokovia, the general public opinion of the Avengers in the US is still largely positive. If we’re going to move forward with any kind of support from the government—and we need the support of the government—we’re going too need to keep it that way.”

Rhodey was nodding along because this had been half his career long enough that the bustle of noise, the shuffle of paper, the coming-and-going of brand-new faces didn’t aggravate him. Steve was half-listening and half-noticing the name badges dangling off the newcomer’s necks. Because the name badges were new and they were different colors at the edges. Everyone was wearing business casual with phones and folders clasped in their hands, hurriedly moving in the hallways and in and out of the conference room to leave additional information in a growing stack at Hill’s left side. “So, we’re sending Captain America out for photo-ops with senators?”

Hill nodded, but she didn’t like the simplification of the plan. The Plan had many parts (many, many parts) and no single part stood a chance of working if the others didn’t. “It’s important that we make friends with influential lawmakers,” she conceded. Her hands closed around the remote she was holding as she sighed, “I’m reaching out to Pepper—for obvious reasons I would prefer Tony—”

“Obvious reasons?” Steve asked. A woman with a yellow name tag handed him a water he hadn’t asked for and Steve didn’t even have time to thank her before she was gone again. (Was it always like this, always a swirl of motion and noise? He couldn’t remember now.) 

“Tony has a lot of friendships in Washington,” Hill said.

“Tony’s a billionaire,” Rhodey added. “He saved the President’s life. He designed the War Machine suit—its in their overall best interest to stay on good terms with Tony Stark.”

“He knows how to play the game,” Hill said. 

“Game?”

“Politics,” Hill clarified. “Now, as far as shifting the blame away from the Avengers,” (and by that she meant the growing boldness of the experts on the TV screen repeating unbelievable numbers about the dead, dying and displaced just seconds before they stated that the Avengers had created and destroyed the problem at the cost of the people of Sokovia), “we can generate a few leaks, let them start to circulate the news programs. We have to move slow, we have to let the tide change—but while we’re waiting,” and she looked directly at Steve, “there are certain things that would help.”

“Certain things?” Steve repeated. There was nothing polite about being vague. He could read as well as anyone, he knew exactly what she was asking him to do: to put on a silly suit and do a song and dance. Maybe he wouldn’t be the one singing but he would have to say something stupid, have to perform like a monkey while a gawky audience watched and a camera filmed it. 

“I think it’s a smart idea,” Rhodey said.

“You’re not the one wearing the tights,” Steve countered.

“It’s harmless.” 

“Participating in a benefit for the Sokovia Relief Fund—that says that you care about the people of Sokovia and if it’s a little campy, that says that you’re humble enough to make a fool of yourself for their benefit. Right now, the only thing that most Americans know about what happened in Sokovia is the Avengers were there and a lot of people lost everything. It’s been almost a month, nobody’s gone on the news. Nobody’s issued a statement, nobody’s done a damn thing.” The tone of Hill’s voice had stopped a man in his tracks, halfway to delivering another folder. He looked at Steve and Rhodey, back at the door and then at her before he inched forward far enough to drop it on the pile and leave. 

Steve sighed. He set the water on the table. 

“So, you’re not?” Rhodey asked. (Steve conveyed _not what_ with his eyebrows, or Rhodey didn’t care. It was hard to tell.) “Humble enough to make a fool of yourself for their benefit?”

Maybe it was that simple; maybe Steve had gotten too high on the horse (was that how the phrase went). Maybe he just didn’t want to be laughed at, nobody liked to be laughed at, but in this god-damn modern world it was more than a shared giggle and a story told across the dinner table. No, a little foolishness never died in a world of camera phones and Youtube videos. 

Maybe it was simpler, much, much simpler, maybe it was just he didn’t like that it felt like he had no choice. A man should have a choice; but Hill was looking at him like the future of the Avengers depended on how shapely his calves were and Rhodey was grinding his teeth with the presumption that Steve didn’t care about Tony fucking Stark. There was no choice. There was no right and no wrong. (But maybe there was, maybe it was the choice to uncurl the anger in his chest, to lay on the wire, to let the whole fucking world crawl across his back. Maybe the anger was selfish, maybe it was only his pride that was screaming in outrage. That was a funny feeling; pride was. Erskine had told him about compassion and strength and weak men but he hadn’t considered what pride felt like when you were being asked to set it aside.) 

“Do you enjoy making a fool of yourself?” he asked.

Rhodey shook his head. “No. I don’t.” (Nobody did, maybe.) “But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t when the moment calls for it. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t if I thought it would help. Come on, Steve,” was not the tone of a friend, “aren’t you all about sacrifice?”

“This isn’t the same.”

Hill cleared her throat. “This would help,” she repeated. “We stand a good chance of success even if you can’t—”

“ _Won’t_ ,” Rhodey corrected.

“—do this.” Hill turned her head just enough to frown at Rhodey before she continued on, “but our chances are much better if you can. It would be ten minutes at the most, the girls do the song, you do your bit, they dance, you pick up something heavy.”

It was simple; it was easy. But he could feel his feet digging into the ground, he could feel his back stiffening against the hands trying to push him forward. He could feel every muscle in the whole of his body working against the inevitable. “I don’t understand how it’s going to help,” because he _didn’t_. Because once he’d put his faith in the hands of men who made him a god-damn monkey when he’d been promised a place in the war. Steve had made his own way, he’d proved he was worth the men that died to make him, and now they were looking at him like it was nothing-at-all to give all that up. 

Put on the suit, sing the song, it’s not so hard. (It wasn’t. He remembered the words.) Steve sighed, “but if its going to help. I’ll do whatever.”

# B SIDE

The only thing worse than a hangover was the nightmare that preceded it. Jerking awake was worse when your head was throbbing and your mouth tasted like a cat took a shit in it. (Not that he’d ever eaten cat shit, just that it must taste bad and his mouth tasted bad.) Tony woke up in the bed (her) husband had stripped clean the day before, covered with a fresh blanket. There was a little tumbler sitting on a sheet of paper on the bedside table. He picked up the glass and sniffed it. The paper said: _hair of the dog_. 

He sipped the liquor and rubbed his fingers through his dirty hair. His whole body was aching and he mumbled something like, “I’m too fucking old for this,” as if it would matter if he just said it enough times. So, he’d said it a few days ago when he was convincing himself that a drink was a bad idea, he’d said it the night before as he opened cabinet after cabinet in search for the sweet amber oblivion and he said it now with a hangover that made even his hair follicles hurt.

Age had no impact on addiction and Tony Stark was smart enough to know that. 

There was Tylenol in the medicine cabinet and a hot shower. He grabbed a late breakfast in the communal kitchen. He sat at the table while he read over his copies of Jane’s reports. Her work was masterful, but it still reached the same conclusion as his: there was no explanation for what had happened, and no way to undo it. 

Maybe he was halfway to wondering if he could locate any more liquor (if Natasha had tossed it all now that she knew he had the nose of an airport drug dog) when Hill found him. She was carrying a leather-bound portfolio (maybe a tablet cover), looking at the nametag he’d clipped to his T-shirt with some faint amusement. “Mr. Rogers,” she said by way of greeting. It wasn’t half as amusing as it seemed to be to her. “If you have a moment, we would appreciate you joining us.”

“Is this in my official capacity as consultant?” He glanced at his watch, “it’s not consulting hours.”

Hill’s strained smile forgave him for his poor attempt at a joke. “If you have the time,” she repeated.

The last meeting had striven for professionalism but this one took place in lounge chairs. Natasha was wearing day-off clothes, a loose shirt and a pair of jeans. Bruce was clinging solidly to shabby-chic, wearing clothes that always looked ever so slightly dusty. Clint had the look of a man who had barely remembered to make an appearance. 

Rhodey smiled at him when he walked in. Sam (Steve’s friend Sam, one of the newest members of the Avengers), looked at him with no expectation of recognizing what he was seeing. But that, at least, was refreshing in its own way. “Good morning Tony,” one (or two, or all) said. 

“Morning,” Tony said. There were limited seats but plenty of space next to Natasha on the little couch. He invited himself to sit there, close enough he could whisper, “what did you do with the liquor?”

“I poured it down the drain,” Natasha whispered back. She didn’t look at him, or move a single muscle of her face not necessary for forming words. There was no satisfaction in her tone. “You can’t instruct Jarvis not to hold it against her. If you could, she’d cheat.” 

Hill was standing, explaining the situation on the ground in Sokovia. NATO had managed to clean up the mess, there were criminal charges being filed against the prisoners that had survived the original assault on the castle. Men in lab coats were reviewing the data they’d pulled off the computers, were looking over the experiments that were being run, “obviously we couldn’t share the scepter with them,” Hill said. “If it’s half as powerful as Thor says it is, it would have been safe in human hands. It appears to give off a malignant energy of its own. One of the researchers said after reviewing Dr. List’s notes that it appears the Scepter has a will of its own. It appears to _want_ something.”

Clint looked over at him, a quick flick of the eyes and then back forward again but Bruce was rubbing one of his fists into the palm of his other hand as he considered that. He was unassuming (and dusty), always polite and inoffensive when he said things like, “you have experience with the Scepter,” at Tony. “Did you get the same impression?”

Yes. Hindsight being 20/20 as it was, the could say with absolute authority, that the Scepter wanted _something_. It wanted a vessel to live in, a body to inhabit. It had made an attempt at finding a place in Ultron but it had ended up as Vision. Vision was alright, but Tony wasn’t so-sure it was a very-good-idea to hand over super-cosmic-being-making formulas to people that might never have to see the damned thing again. “Yes,” he said. 

“Do you know what it wants?” Natasha asked.

“No,” was true when you considered that not even Vision, who was made of the Mind Stone trapped in Loki’s Scepter knew what it wanted or what it _was_. “We interacted with the Scepter differently where I’m from—I’d rather not go into details. What you did was smarter.”

That was enough to shift the conversation back to what was found in the castle. (Surprise, surprise, Hydra was stealing Chitauri equipment and Stark tech. They had catalogued the whole castle full of stolen goods and Hill showed the list as a quick scroll through pages-and-pages-and- _pages_ of items. When they’d exhausted every topic, but the important one Hill said, “as of right now, we have been unable to locate the Maximoff twins. We have agents on the ground but with their unique abilities it has been somewhat more difficult to pin down an exact location.”

“The Maximoff twins,” Sam said, “they’re the ones that took out Steve? The ones that,” he raised a hand and wiggled is fingers at his own head to indicate Wanda’s ability.

“Yes,” Hill said. “That was,” she hit a button on her remote and brought up the picture of Wanda on the screen at the head of the room. “Wanda Maximoff. She and her brother Pietro,” not worth a photograph, “were orphaned when they were eleven. She has taken part in several organized protests against the ongoing occupation by outside forces and the political turmoil at the national level. We believe she was recruited by Hydra under the pretense of being able to use their powers to help protect their country.”

“What about her,” Clint asked. He pointed (an arrow shaft? A drumstick? A long straw, it was hard to tell with Clint) at the screen. “You said we were smarter about the scepter, you’ve been through all this with Wanda, if you could change what happened what would you do?”

It wasn’t what he would have done, it was what he would _not_ have done. Still, Tony was saying, “she’s just a kid,” exactly how Steve had explained it to him. “She thinks that she’s doing something necessary, something _good_ for her country. She thinks the men we arrested are her allies and that makes the Avengers, the men who attacked her castle, the enemies. She won’t hesitate to use her power against you. But,” he shrugged, “she can be recruited.”

“How did you convince her you weren’t an enemy?” Rhodey asked.

He hadn’t; she took a peek inside the mind of a planet killer and it scared her. Tony said, “I wouldn’t recommend following our lead in that area. Wanda can be reasoned with, but she is powerful and she should be treated with caution.”

Natasha was nodding, “thank you, Tony.” That was as good as _good bye_ Tony. His Mother and Father had taught him all about overstaying his welcome (Howard was reliable at reminding Tony when he wasn’t wanted). So he nodded his head back and motioned toward the door. 

“I’ll be in the lab,” sounded like something he would do. Everyone nodded and thanked him and watched him go. When the door was closed, he couldn’t _hear_ them but he could _feel_ the way they must have looked at one another, whispering their soft concerns back-and-forth. With nothing to drink, and nothing better to do, he went to the lab. It flickered to full life when he walked in, and Jarvis piped up to say:

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Jarvis,” he said as he pulled the desk chair away from his desk. “When was my last drink?”

“Approximately twelve hours ago, sir,” Jarvis said.

“I told you not to count that one.”

“Sorry sir,” was not even a little convincing. “Would you like to review the current alcohol rehabilitation programs available, sir?”

Tony laughed, leaned back into the chair and rubbed his face with both his hands. (He thought: look at what she’d built. Look at what she’d done. Look at how far she’d gotten when she decided enough-was-enough and there was nothing in the bottom of a bottle but emptiness.) He said, “not right now.” But, “remind me. Tomorrow. Remind me every day.”

“Yes, sir.”

# B SIDE

“Come on, walk it off,” Steve said when he stuttered out of a good run to a jog to a walk in the space of two or three feet. He didn’t stop entirely because that sort of thing was bad for your body. (Or, he was told it was.) Since he couldn’t stop and Sam wasn’t moving, that left him doing a circle while Sam leaned forward with his hands gripping his knees. 

“You walk it off,” Sam retorted so fast he couldn’t even have had time to think about what he meant to say. No, he straightened up and let out a breath, his face was shiny from the sweat and his shirt was sticking to his chest. His legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate as he took a single step forward to match the one that Steve took backward. “So, this is what you do with your time now? Call your friends, see how many times you can run circles around them before they collapse?”

“No,” Steve said, “that would be insensitive. I only run laps around you, Sam.” He waved his hand back and forth between them, “it’s _our_ thing. Our _special_ thing.”

Sam was walking forward now, moving half speed with every step, he pulled his shirt up to wipe his face before he spoke again, “that’s very romantic of you, Steve. I appreciate that, thank you.” 

“Only for you, Sam,” Steve assured him.

Sam was nodding along to the sound of the words, crooking his mouth up into almost a smile. Steve had called him (since he was in town) and he had asked him to meet for a run (since nobody else would humor him on the account). He hadn’t meant to get so far ahead, so many times, but every time he slowed down he could feel the nightmare moving under his skin. “That’s how you’re going to play this?”

“Play what?” He had to look over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t going to walk into anything.

“Play what?” Sam repeated. He stopped again, arms crossed over his chest, giving Steve the look that meant they’d reached the point in the banter where one of them would have to start being serious. “You know we have to talk about this.”

“I don’t think we do.” Steve stopped anyway, hands on his hips, feeling the supremely satisfying burn of well worked muscles with a little bit of a late spring breeze cooling the sweat on his forehead. “I don’t think there’s anything we can accomplish by talking about it.”

“Sometimes it’s not about accomplishing anything.”

“Sam.” He didn’t need another friend looking at him like a terminal case. He didn’t need another person giving him slow hugs and reassuring promises about how his wife would find her way back. He didn’t need someone asking him what he was going to do about the Tony he had instead. He just needed someone that didn’t _care_ , someone that wasn’t waiting for him to fall apart at the seams. “Come on. It’s me. I’m fine.”

Sam waved his finger in the air, “that,” he said to accentuate the point, “ _that_ is exactly what you always say and I’m no mathematician, man, but even I know the percentage of the time it’s the truth is pretty small. Come on, who can you talk to if you can’t talk to your best friend?”

“I didn’t plan on talking to anyone.” He heaved a sigh, “so they had a meeting this morning?”

“No, no, no don’t do that,” Sam said.

“You wanted to talk, I’m trying to talk.”

“I can’t talk about Avengers business with you, Steve. You know the rules—you helped _write_ the rules. Why?” Sam threw his arms up, “I don’t know, because I’ve never met any combination of people on the planet that cares less about rules.”

That wasn’t true; Tony liked rules. At very least, Tony liked the structure that the pretense of rules provided. She liked how everything could be shifted and assigned when there were rules and procedures and protocols in place. Check-and-double-check kept the Avengers running smoothly and when she needed someone that wasn’t as bothered by the pretense of deniability she stepped back and waved her hand to let him take the lead. 

That was where those titles came from, the _team_ leader who deflected the blame, who cited rules at senate hearings, the one that shook hands with Queens and Kings and Presidents and the _field_ leader that did what was _necessary_ when it was _necessary_. 

“Well I don’t have anything to talk about,” Steve said.

“What are you going to do about this Tony?” Sam asked. “Are we considering you married to this man? He is _her_?”

Steve ran his hand through his hair, and resisted the urge to pull some of it out. “As far as I’m concerned he is the same and I am married to him. What would you like to talk about?” He expected a variety of colorful remarks to follow it up because the others could see disaster when they looked at this Tony, but Sam always sided with humor in tough spots.

“When are you taking him back to Malibu?” Sam asked. “You’re out, he’s out and this place—it’s not doing him any good. I’m tired and I just looked at him for ten minutes. I’m _exhausted_.”

Steve let his head hang. “I can’t make him do anything.”

“You could ask him,” Sam countered. But he relented with, “so you think she’d be mad if you had sex with him? I mean, wasn’t she encouraging you to sleep with other people? Something about experiences?”

“You think that would help anything?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine it would hurt.” But before Steve could think he was serious Sam was putting a hand up to stop him, “I don’t mean it. You can’t sleep with the guy, _she_ would kill you. Unless you recorded,” Sam winked at him. “I bet she’d like that.”

“I’m leaving,” Steve said. He even turned around and started walking away because there were things he was willing to make light of and there were things he wasn’t. (And ten days ago, when he had a wife and a team, he would have let the joke play it out, would have let Sam set him up with a line up of potential sex tape partners and go through the process of selecting the right one. But now, there was no humor in the situation. Just another reminder that he might never see her again.)

“Come on,” Sam called. He jogged to catch up. “I just mean to say, I’m here for you. And, do what you’ve got to do. Get better—but, if he comes by, maybe ask Tony if he wants to stay with you. If he wants to go to Malibu, get some sun, take a nap. He looks like shit.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve said. “Not sure he wants anything to do with me, Sam. I can’t force him to.”

“We getting lunch?”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Late lunch,” Sam amended and when that didn’t make Steve agree immediately, “early dinner? Come on, I’m hungry. You know what’s in the fridges at the tower. I need real food.”

“Fine, but we talk about sports. Movies I need to watch—music that you think I still need to listen to.” That never failed (and didn’t seem to fail this time) to set Sam off on a rant about how he was the only authority on the things that Steve missed. He was full of information about the _soul_ and the _spirit_ of the years that Steve had lost. What Sam valued wasn’t always what Steve preferred but the passion was what mattered. Sam loved what he loved without limit; everyone needed to have that passion, to feel that fire, and when Steve couldn’t bring himself to feel anything, he started this very-same-fight.

# A SIDE

Sokovia had beautiful countryside. Tony had seen it from satellite images when they were planning the assault on the castle. It hadn’t been important at the time, whether or not Sokovia was aesthetically pleasing and it wasn’t important now, except that she was in a car, travelling a long road, taking in the simple beauty of the trees. Now she had the time, and the solitude, and the complete lack of purpose, to lean her forehead against the glass and watch the trees pass her by.

Things like this, moments lost in transit, moments when the world slowed and everything came into a crystalline focus, she always thought of Yinsen. She thought of his steady hands, and his quiet. She thought of his face when he said, this is an important week for you. Yinsen was the first point in the timeline of her map that had slowed down. Life had stuttered to a shocking halt in that cave, with certain death always a breath or two away, every minute was a small eternity. Yinsen would have liked these trees, he would have liked this space, he would have liked his family to see this, he would have liked all of them to be alive. But things did not always go as one planned.

The long road let out into a disaster area. Temporary buildings littered the roadside, jammed into place wherever there was a few inches of space. Banners announced each building’s purpose from clinics to charities giving out toothbrushes, the world that had been endless a mile ago was narrowed to a funnel. The road was slim, clogged with trucks trying to maneuver around the uneven pavement. In the distance was the sound of honking, the wailing noise of people trying to get _out_. 

“I’ll walk,” Tony said. She leaned forward far enough to offer the driver a tip. 

“It is still miles,” the man said, “are you sure?”

Tony nodded. She picked the bag up off the seat. (She’d thought about bringing the suit, about how heavy and how obvious it would be to carry with her. She’d left it in a Stark office in Berlin, tucked into a corner closet with a note that said it should not be tampered with. The travel distance wasn’t ideal, but many things were not ideal. 

She passed a woman with a white mask that called out in alarm. She was speaking French, frenzied and impatient as she waved a mask at her face. Tony knew enough about French to get the point: the air wasn’t safe to breath. 

(Exploding a city in the atmosphere would have that effect on the surrounding area.) Tony took the mask to calm the woman and let her fix on her face. She accepted a pair of a gloves that were thrust at her as well and nodded along to the importance of hygiene and skin care. They were volunteers, heading into a disaster area, and like Mothers on a crashing plane, they had to put their own welfare first. 

The trucks that were blocking the road were loaded with necessities like water, soap, food in tin boxes. She walked past a station that was sorting trash bags full of clothes, tumbling out T-shirts donated by concerned housewives in Alabama. The ground on either side of the road was soft and muddy, it stuck to her shoes as she walked—on and on, forward.

It was over a mile, past a hundred volunteers milling around buildings, organizing supplies that were being prepared, skimming just along the edge of the road clogged with vehicles trying to get _into_ the city, before she found the cars trying to get out. The traffic was so bad the cars had given up hope of moving. 

She walked past a Mother sitting on the hood of the car, holding a sleeping baby against her chest. A man (her husband, her brother, her father—who knew) was frowning at the tires of his car, at the road, at the trucks that were moving as slow as sloths, creeping forward. The noise was deafening, it vibrated through her body, and the ground and filled the soggy, dirty air. 

The closer she got to the city, the dustier the air got. It was like a sand storm, a constant rain of dirt that blew with every motion. It was covering the cars, the trucks, the people that were standing on the road. There were children sitting together, drawing in the fine film of filth covering their family’s car. 

There was no sense of time, or distance, between the last proper road into the city (from the west) and the edge of the safe zone. She had no access, and no real desire to fight the security guard that stood inside the orange-and-black barrier shaking his head when she walked up. It was easier to go up than forward so she back tracked to the trees, found one she could climb. She hung her bag on a low branch and worked her way up until she could see it.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t _seen_ the crater, it wasn’t that she didn’t know all the specifics—the width, the depth, the sheer impossible size of it. But there was a difference between knowing the measurements and witnessing it in real life. 

The difference was a skip in her heart, was the sudden realization of how terribly _small_ she really was. Because there were cars and trees and half of houses that had collapsed into the crater. They looked _small_ , as tiny as a child’s toy buried in the backyard. She could see where mudslides had caved in the edges of the crater, where rain had formed pools, where holes were forming beneath the surface. 

This is what they’d done. The _Avengers_ that pretended to be heroes in this stupid world. (This is what _Tony_ thought he’d done all by himself; this was the result and realization of his fear. This is what Steven was ignoring, safe and comfortable in his brand-new Avenger’s compound. It was what he was letting men with stupid faces and no education lay at Tony’s feet.)

Look at this, look at what they had done.

What did Steve say? (Acts of Gods and men in churches; there’s no going back, there’s only going forward.) 

Tony wiped the tears off her face, she climbed back down and she went back into what was left of the half-crumbling city. There were no lights in the buildings outside the disaster zone, as far as she could see, there were no lights. A man in a uniform was shouting through a bullhorn, reminding everyone of the curfew in a few hours, advising everyone to finish their business and return to safety. 

The volunteers were passing out bags of food, candles, baby supplies. They were wearing white masks and gloves, handing things to families in plain clothes. Tony spread her fingers across the mask on her face. (Always put your oxygen on before helping others.) She pulled it off and balled it up.

“Excuse me,” she said to the man with the bullhorn, “where is the power plant?”

The man laughed, “you are lost,” he said. He pointed across the crater, through the trees, toward the distant flicker of car lights on the single road that fed into the city. “Very lost,” he said.

“Are there generators?”

“What group are you from?” the man asked. “I will tell you how to get back to them. They have generators if you need to charge your phone,” his words were dripping sarcasm. He looked at her with a shake of his head. “Which group?”

Tony ran her tongue across her lips, tasted the fine dust that filled the air. “I’m alone.” 

“Then you are stupid,” the man said. But he didn’t hold it against her. He gave her an address and a name and pointed her in the direction of a woman that would let her sleep in her spare room. (She uses it for quilts, the man told her.) “No problem,” he said when she thanked him, “you won’t be here long.” And he didn’t seem to hold that against her either. He had more important things to do, like scream reminders about the curfew into the bullhorn.

Tony found the house as the sky went dark, she knocked with the slip of paper clutched in her hand and waited until the door was pulled open. A woman with gray hair looked her over with a curious tilt of her head. “Anna?” she asked, “I—the man with the bullhorn,” who hadn’t given her his name, “said you might let me sleep in your spare room.”

Anna looked her over, “are you coming to make trouble?”

“No,” Tony said. “I’m coming to help.”

That made Anna laugh, she opened the door and waved her arm inward. “If you can find somewhere, you can sleep there.” Inside was filled with people, more people than it seemed like there was space to accommodate. The taste of the air was sweat and dirt, made more unnerving by how quiet it was.

“Thank you,” Tony said. She found a space through a doorway that seemed free. It was just a little stretch of wall under a cracked window. Anna followed her, pulled a quilt off a small stack and offered it to her. 

“You won’t stay long,” Anna assured her. Then she nodded to herself and went back to the room of more familiar faces. Tony held the quilt on her lap with her back against the wall and her eyes closed. 

The quiet was deafening, but it was good to think in, good to sort through what she’d seen, good to figure out where to _start_.

# A SIDE

Women did not confound him. Despite the ongoing joke, Steve had successfully met and had conversations with a variety of attractive women. He’d gone to war, he’d faced an invasion of aliens, he’d been frozen alive for seventy years, a pretty woman in a pencil skirt did not intimidate him in any significant way. 

(And honestly, if a beautiful woman in a form hugging outfit were his true Achilles heel, Natasha would have been far more effective at manipulating him than she already thought she was.) 

And unlike what some thought of him (Natasha, Tony, probably Sam) he didn’t live an entirely chaste existence, never once having a single sexual thought. There was just a time and a place for one to have sexual thoughts and walking into a meeting room to greet Pepper Potts (wearing a pencil skirt) was not the appropriate time or place to think about such things. Steve thought that made him a gentleman; anyone who watched him speak to a woman thought it made him a terminal virgin. “Pepper,” he said, “how are you?”

Despite her connection to Tony, they hadn’t ever had much of an excuse to talk. Certainly they’d never spoken privately and never while the only person that connected their lives was displaced into another universe. Pepper smiled like a defense mechanism, it was automatic, and she said, “I’m fine, thank you for asking. How are you? How’s the,” her arm lifted slightly away from her side to indicate she was going to say, “arm?”

“Fully healed,” he assured her.

“Good,” Pepper’s hands were holding themselves, resting lightly against her body as she looked steadily at his eyebrows. “She said it would heal. I told her that wasn’t the point. You wouldn’t think that you would ever have to explain that you shouldn’t break someone’s arm just because you can to a grown woman but,” she shrugged, “ _Tony_.”

Steve nodded. “Rhodey said that you needed to talk to me about—” In fact, Rhodey had not said that she needed to talk to him. Friday had given him the message as sent by Rhodey and it had not included a topic.

“Yes,” Pepper smoothed her hands across her skirt. “I thought as the leader of the Avengers that you should know—and you know, that even if it doesn’t seem like, Tony trusts you? _Our_ Tony, I mean. If he didn’t trust you he wouldn’t have given you,” she raised a hand to encompass the building, or maybe the Avengers, or maybe all of it. “He can be difficult, but I truly believe, in my heart, that he really means well.”

“I’m sure he does,” Steve agreed.

Pepper paused, she shifted her weight just a bit. Her posture sharpened to a point and her smile went a bit wooden on the edges. While nothing outwardly changed about her face, her entire expression seemed to become a mask. “Good.” (But her tone seemed to think it was not.) “Tony values your friendship. He wouldn’t like me mentioning it, but this,” she did motion that time, “isn’t easy. When I say that he puts his trust in you I mean that he has wagered his entire fortune on the Avengers and given you control of them without ever telling you what is at stake. While it may seem like Tony does not care about anything to _you_ , or that his wealth and influence is inexhaustible, but you would be wrong.”

“I appreciate the trust that—”

Pepper didn’t roll her eyes, she didn’t interrupt him, she just smiled at him with her hands clasped together and her back straight. She let him say what he needed to say and when he was finished ( _he puts in me_ ), she said, “I’m glad to hear that. I expect that the next time I watch the news, I’ll see something besides Tony’s name being thrown about by complete hacks in ugly suit jackets.”

“We’re developing a plan,” Steve assured her.

“Excellent.”

Funny how chastised he felt. Funny how he’d never once seen Pepper upset, never once seen her anything but sweet and doting. Funny how he’d never once thought what any woman that was willing to be in a relationship with Tony must be like. And now he was standing here feeling perfectly inadequate, waiting to see if she had any other suggestions to make. “If—”

“Ms. Stark has left,” Pepper said. It was only amazing how the tone remained the same, as if she could come and imply that he didn’t deserve the trust he was given (the cost of which he still didn’t know) and in the same breath admit that the Tony who didn’t belong here was not where she said she would be. 

“Where is she?” Steve asked.

“Sokovia.”

(There it was again, that old sensation of wanting to put his fist through a wall.) “Why is she in Sokovia?”

Pepper didn’t shrug but she didn’t know either. If she had a reason, she didn’t believe it. But she said, “Ms. Stark wants to help the people of Sokovia and since she isn’t able to be helpful here,” (which was not Steve’s fault no matter how Pepper looked at him), “she went there. She took one of Tony’s new gauntlets, so we’ll know where she’s at as long as she’s wearing it.”

“Great,” Steve said. “Anything else?”

“I believe she took the Mark 42 armor with her, I cannot track that.” Pepper did not like that (neither did Steve), her stiff posture and her perfect mask stuttered. “I thought you should know, in case the Iron Man suit shows up in Sokovia. To the best of my knowledge, she doesn’t intend to use it.”

(No, she’d just built it, and given him specifications he couldn’t understand, she’d packed it up and she’d taken it on a plane, but she wasn’t going to use it.) Steve nodded his head, “thank you, Pepper.” 

Pepper nodded. She leaned to the side to pick up the bag she’d brought and slid it up onto her shoulder. 

“Do you trust her?” Steve asked.

Pepper fidgeted with the strap of her bag, ran her finger across the zipper and considered the question before she looked up at him again. “I trust her to do what she believes is the right thing, the way I’m trusting you to do what you believe is the right thing.” Then she smiled at him and raised to her hand to point out to the hallway, “I’ll show myself out.”

Steve nodded and let her go around him. He stood in the conference room thinking about how funny that word _trust_ was, and how _right_ had never felt more subjective to him in that moment. He thought about finding Rhodey, about telling him what his best friend was doing (and where) and it was a petty little warmth in his chest for a moment before he sighed. 

There was no option but trusting Tony to do the right thing. (And he didn’t like it, and that didn’t matter.)

# B SIDE

Steve was sober when he finally made it back to the apartment. Steve was _always_ sober, but had worked off the laughs that Sam had wrung out of him over dinner. He’d walked when he should have gotten a cab; and he’d walked off all the good energy. It was getting dark by the time he got home, dim on the front steps when he came to a slow stop not so far from where Tony Stark (himself, the one and only of two) was sitting. 

“I got your address from Natasha,” Tony said. 

That did sound like something Natasha would do. It sounded exactly like her handiwork, always pulling the strings behind the scenes and acting surprised when she got found out. Steve pointed up toward his apartment, “want to come up?”

Tony wasn’t hugging his body but he wasn’t _not_ doing it either. Folded in like he was, he looked small. “I messed up,” was not the answer that Steve was looking for. “I ruined her record. It’s my fault for not thinking it through—I just, I never really thought about not drinking. I never thought I had a problem with it. Maybe I don’t,” (Steve wasn’t trying to be judgmental but from his outside view of the situation, Tony did have a problem.) “But I think, I should quit and then I think, I don’t have to. That’s a problem, isn’t it?”

This felt like the sort of conversation that might take a while, so he invited himself to sit next to Tony on the step. It was close enough to share the warmth of their bodies almost touching but just far enough away their elbows weren’t touching. “It could be,” he said. “Do you want to quit?”

“I want to want to,” Tony glanced sideways at him. He looked indecisive about what he meant to say, and it was surprising to both of him when he said, “can I stay here tonight?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Of course you can.”

“Thanks,” Tony looked out at the street, rubbing his fingers up and down his elbow absent-mindedly. There was no movement toward standing, no immediate follow up to take this conversation from the very public place to a more private one. 

Steve looked at the steps, at the crack in the bottom one, at the little weeds that were trying to grow up in the space. It would have been foolish to assume the Avengers would continue indefinitely without change. Tony had been the first to point out that half the members were only as-needed and at the core, it was him-and-her. She was in her forties (she was fond of reminding him) and still spry (so she said) but injury or age would sooner-or-later require her to step away. It would get them all in the end and she’d built her tower, she’d built the Avengers, she’d built the complex web of companies that funded their empire to outlive her. She had anticipated the moment when she would step away, there were protocols to cover retirement.

He should take Tony back to Malibu, away from the noise. He should take him back to the house that she’d built even when everyone said she couldn’t, to the simplicity of life away from the Avengers. The man needed space and sleep and safety. There was none of that here. 

“We should probably go in,” Tony said. “Pepper would yell at us if they got pictures of us out here.”

(They probably already had gotten pictures. But that wasn’t important.) Steve nodded. “Yeah, sure. It’s just a small apartment but you’re welcome to stay. I don’t have any food, so we’ll have to order in when you get hungry.”

Tony got to his feet, waited for Steve to get the door open, waited to be invited in. He said, “thanks,” again when they were inside, on the stairs. It felt like there was something he wasn’t saying, like he hadn’t figured out exactly what he it was himself.

(Maybe it was only loneliness, maybe it was looking for a friend in a strange place, maybe it was ‘everything happened for a reason’ and Steve had one chance not to fuck this up.)


	10. Chapter 10

# A SIDE

A man with a seamstress tape measure and a slight tremor in his left hand was waiting for Steve in one of the conference rooms. He had taken the liberty of bringing along blue swatches for Hill to approve. 

“I loved Captain America as a child,” the man said. (Steve tried not to be judgmental, but the man looked old enough to have been alive at the same time Steve was punching Nazi’s the first go around.) “I almost had a complete set of trading cards.” 

“I know the bright blue is more authentic,” Hill was saying to the straight up-and-down man with glasses perched on his nose. He was carrying a three-inch binder that qualified him to be an expert in everything even peripherally related to Captain America. Up-to-and _including_ Steve’s uniform. 

“It’s not only more authentic it is identical to the original USO costume,” the man added.

The man with the measuring tape was adjusting the way Steve held out his arms at his side here-and-there, making mumbling sounds as he recorded the numbers he found. Steve was patient standing with his arms straight out at his sides like a scarecrow. “Tony has to have these measurements,” Steve said.

“I’m sure he does,” Hill responded. She was talking directly to the fabric swatches, grimacing at the bright blue (which was very nearly identical to the original USO costume). “I’m also sure that I’m not allowed to access that information.” She looked up at him, “I’m sure he has a much more efficient way to get new measurements but you’re an old-fashioned guy. I thought you’d appreciate the personal _touch_.”

Oh yes, Steve appreciated the man with the wrinkled fingertips muttering things to himself as he took his time running the measuring tape along every inch of Steve’s body he thought the could. It may have been necessary (or it may not have been). He knew nothing about making clothes and even less about how his suits were made exactly. His input on the matter had only ever been to offer suggestions about how he’d like to improve the armor aspects or provide a better range of motion. (And maybe, just maybe, if they could make the suit less of a great blue eyesore.) “Yeah, thanks,” he said. He crooked a finger to point at the fabric options, “do we really need to recreate the original suit?”

“We wouldn’t have to if someone hadn’t destroyed it,” the man with the binder said. He sounded rather snooty for a man who had not (as far as Steve could tell) invaded an enemy country. No, the man didn’t care about the prisoners of war that Steve had rescued but that the USO suit had been (purposefully) accidentally destroyed in the process. Howard had done a great job using the inspiration into a suit that was slightly better at protecting a man but that god-awful cotton onesie hadn’t survived. “It has to be this one,” the man said.

“So, it doesn’t matter that I have to wear it?” Steve asked.

Hill shook her head, “it doesn’t matter at all,” she picked up the worst option out of all of them and handed it to the man with the binder as if she was loathed to agree before she stacked the remaining swatches into the box she’d dumped them out of. “With that body? It doesn’t matter what we put on it, you’ll still look good. We need nostalgia to work in our favor.”

“Is this necessary?” he nodded his head down at the man who was stooping in front of him, muttering appreciative things about his waist.

“I’m sure he’s nearly finished,” Hill said. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the table. “You can go,” she said to the binder man. He took his dismissal without grace, huffing as he went, and that left them alone with the old man with a hand tremor investigating Steve’s body. “Is there something you want to tell me about Tony?”

Only that she had decided to invite herself to Sokovia. Only that he didn’t have a single idea what she planned there—what she hoped to accomplish. (He’d been up half the night, trying to figure out how she benefited from this.) “Is there something you already know about Tony that you’d like to tell me?”

Hill’s smile didn’t slip a second. She just met his eyes, arms over her chest, daring him to prove anything. “I’m busy, Steve. I don’t have time to keep track of your team.”

“I’m sure,” because they both knew that Hill knew exactly where Tony was. They both knew that whatever was left of SHIELD was involved with Sokovia, keeping an eye on early developments. Somewhere, an intrepid agent with an internet connection was copying Hill on every bit of gossip there was to hear. Steve would have bet his life on it. “Make sure you tell me if something worth my attention comes up.” 

The man with the tape measure was checking his inseam with far too much precision. Hill was trying not to look so outwardly amused and managing only to keep from outright laughing at him. “I think that’s enough,” she said.

“It’s been an honor,” the man said. He shook Steve’s hand and gathered his things. “I’ll start working on it as soon as I get the specifics.” 

Hill walked him to the door of the conference room before she handed him off to the man with the binder and when they were both walking away talking about their _ideas_ and _visions_ , Hill closed the door and turned to look at him. “She’s helping to clear roads in Sokovia.” That wasn’t what he expected. “Most exits from what remains of the city were blocked by debris. They’ve managed to fully clear a single path, but that means everyone trying to get out and everyone trying to get in are travelling the same route. That leads to a great deal of gridlock as you can imagine. It’s impossible to land a plane or a helicopter close enough to deliver supplies by any means except truck.”

“Is she using the suit?” Steve asked.

“From what I was told, she’s using her hands.” Maria had one hand on her hip and the other hanging at her side. Just for a minute, if that long, for a fraction of a moment, she looked as if she felt sorry for him. As if they had reached a point of balance in their relationship where she had been forced to acknowledge that no amount of effort would ever render them equals and he would _always_ be lagging. The look didn’t last, it was wiped away and replaced with simple efficiency. 

“Tony’s moving debris by hand?” (The absurdity wasn’t that Tony _couldn’t_ because of course he _could_ but that he _would_. Sokovia hadn’t met Tony’s minimum quality standards before they’d accidentally created a crater in the center of the city. Now that it was ground zero of a(n un)natural disaster there was even less reason to think the man (or woman in this case) would let herself be anywhere near it much less that she’d actively participate in filthy manual labor. 

“That’s what the reports say,” Hill agreed. “It’s not that insane.”

“I didn’t think Tony liked to get,” (physical wasn’t quite the right word. Sweaty wasn’t either, they’d all seen Tony get out of the suit with his temporary clothes salt-glued to his skin from the fight. He wasn’t afraid of his own blood either judging by how often he showed up with injuries.) “Dirty.”

“Maybe not.” It wasn’t worth debating. “I’m finished with what I need for the day. I’ll keep you posted on any new developments.” That was a polite way of telling him to get lost and Steve took the exit she provided.

# B SIDE

Five days into a new reality of nightly nightmares and one week after he woke up next to a husband where he’d been used to a wife, Steve was _exhausted_ in a way that was starting to bend reality. Standing in front of the fridge with one hand on the door and the other resting on his hip, he couldn’t figure out if the food had been there the day before or if someone had bothered to break into his apartment to restock the fridge. He’d opened ever cabinet in the kitchen and found it the same, filled with food—overfull with food even. (If such a thing existed.) 

Getting angry over someone caring enough to bring him food seemed _stupid_ but there he was digging his fingers into the smooth, cool metal of his fridge door thinking unkind things about whoever had the audacity to do anything of the sort. Because the food-was-there and if it was there then he had no reason not to eat it. 

Steve did not specialize in anger. In fact, the last time he thought he might have finally got a handle on it (back when he was fresh out of the ice, back when he was working his way through the cosmic unfairness that had brought him to this time-and-place) his growing attempts had been easily bested by three words. 

_So, you’re him?_ was the very first thing Tony had ever said to him, back when she showed up in a nice suit and heels. Back when they were strangers in a windowless conference room at SHIELD headquarters, when Tony was nothing but fury-and-rage with dark circles under her eyes and pink knuckles. Tony looked at him with forty-one years of finely crafted anger, but it hadn’t been meant for him. That anger had Howard’s signature on it, but anger was notoriously difficult to aim with efficiency and Tony didn’t (seem to) mind much at all who got hurt as long as she had the chance to air her grievances. 

Tony curated anger like a fine art collection, packing it in crates and storing it until a need arose. When she pried the box open again, the anger was still there and all the more breath-taking after an absence. 

Steve was an amateur at anger; like a toddler smacking pans around on the stove. 

Tony was drawn in by the noise, rubbing his tired face with his palms, wearing no shoes or socks and sweats he’d borrowed the night before. They were just slightly too long, dragging at his heels while he walked and yawned. “Are the pans heavy?”

“No,” Steve said. He slammed the oven door after he slid the tray of biscuits in and Tony winced at the noise. Saying something like: _I didn’t mean to wake you_ seemed insincere (and God knows one should never offer a polite nicety in the direction of a Stark). “How’d you sleep?”

“Awfully,” Tony said. He had the look of a man leaning on something while standing straight up. “You?”

The thing he missed, more than the others, was how his wife _listened_ even when all he had to say was that he was tired, even when he had nothing to say. She _listened_ and she wrapped all the words he said up in her head and she kept them safe. Sam might have listened, and Natasha could keep a secret, but it was different. There were motives and motivations to consider. Steve wanted to pour his nightmares out, to explain exactly how he hadn’t slept well at all and why but he just shrugged. “I’ve slept better.”

Tony nodded, “I’m going to make coffee—maybe, do you have a coffee maker?”

The were quiet strangers in a small room, going through the motions of finishing breakfast and setting the table. Tony sipped his coffee and Steve tried to convince himself to eat (and hungry as he was, it shouldn’t have been difficult). 

“I’m,” Tony started (abruptly, after staring at his coffee for a good two minutes of time, not once looking up or sideways, as if he had uncovered a crucial truth to the universe in the bottom of his mug), “not very good at,” he drew a circle with his hand to indicate the whole table, “awkward situations.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Steve assured him. He stabbed an egg (that he made and wanted to eat and couldn’t seem to convince his arm to transport to his face), “you’re pretty good at making them more awkward.”

Tony snorted. His lips curled up into something approximating a genuine smile. Rather than say anything immediately he took another sip of the coffee and set the cup down. He leaned back in his seat, with one leg out from under the table (as if he were at all times prepared to escape). “You tell me your nightmare I tell you mine?”

“I murder my wife in a bathtub,” Steve said.

“I crawl over the corpses of our friends to watch you die,” Tony agreed.

“Me?” Steve repeated, “you don’t like me.”

Tony shrugged. “I didn’t put it,” his finger drifted close to but didn’t touch his temple, “I guess we come across as friendlier than we are. I’m good at that, public relations—shaking hands, smiling for cameras, convincing people to do things they don’t want to do.”

Steve gave up trying to force himself to eat the egg and picked up a biscuit instead. They were easy to pull to pieces, to dab in the yolk and eat without all the complications of a fork. He even managed to pull it to pieces before he stalled out. “We should go back to Malibu,” was everything he’d thought over last night when he was trying to fall asleep, listening to Tony doing the same in an adjacent room. 

“Should we?” Tony said.

“We’re not doing any good here,” Steve said. He meant to say, there was nothing for them to accomplish here what with how they were men riddled with nightmares, excluded from being members of the Avengers and presently being as helpful as a head cold but Tony snorted, shook his head, with his mouth pulling up into a grimace. “Tony, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s fine Cap.”

“I only mean that we can’t help them—neither of us are members of the Avengers and—”

“I thought I was being helpful,” Tony suggested. “For obvious reasons,” (that weren’t, despite what Tony felt about it, _obvious_ to anyone), “there are certain things I can’t say. Sure, why not, let’s go to Malibu.”

“I’m sure you’re being helpfu—”

Tony was chuckling to himself, shaking his head as he kicked his chair back, “she’s good,” didn’t seem to follow any part of the conversation. “Every time,” his fist squeezed together and loosened up again, “every time I think it’s genuine—no, she’s good—she got to you. I didn’t think she could, I mean, my _Steve_ , she’s got her arm so far up his ass he’s basically a disobedient hand puppet, but I expected—I don’t know why.”

“You mean Natasha?” Steve asked.

“No, another voluptuous redheaded spy that’s been following me around.” 

“Tony—”

“Its my fault. Scorpions and frogs and all that.” Tony looked down at the table six steps away from it and seemed to recover just enough to say, “thank you for breakfast Steve. I have to go—be useless somewhere else.”

“Damn it,” Steve huffed. He stood up so fast the chair flew backward. His voice was like a foghorn exploded out of his chest. “Natasha didn’t tell me to take you back to Malibu!”

There was no need for Tony to say anything when his entire body exuded his complete and utter distrust of the statement. 

“People are _concerned_ for you, because they _love_ ,” not this man, not directly, but the person whose spot he’d taken over. 

“Her?” Tony prompted.

“Yes,” Steve said. “There’s nothing for us here, Tony. They won’t let you become a member of the Avengers and I’m not saying that because I’m trying to start a fight or because—I don’t know, whatever you’re thinking. They won’t do it because of the rules _she_ wrote. And you’re not happy.”

“You have no idea what I am,” Tony hissed back.

“Likewise.” That left them staring at one another, with their chests sticking out and the air as thick as stew. It felt (but shouldn’t have felt) like a battle, like they were armed and ready, like it was to-the-death and wasn’t that just _stupid_? Steve lifted his arms to show his hands, to give before it could get uglier. “I only meant, we both need the rest.”

But Tony wasn’t going to give, it was obvious even before he opened his mouth, even before he said, “I’m not tired, Cap. But you can go.” Then he walked away.

Steve hung his head, looked at the spread of food going cold, with his knuckles pushed against the table. He felt like (crying, maybe), he’d gone six rounds with an orangutan. He closed his eyes (he thought of her, of how she could fight-for-days over _nothing_ , of how she would have shook her head at him, would have smiled, would have asked him if he could have fucked it up a bit better). “Fuck,” he sighed. 

The sound of the front door slamming was the final punctuation of the argument.

# A SIDE

The heart wants what the heart wants.

Bucky used to say that to him, in the dark part of winter when there was a bit of liquor on his breath. He said it with the full, warm bulk of his perfectly shaped body close enough to Steve’s skinny, imperfect one, that a fog developed between them. With his arm across Steve’s shoulders the words were as lascivious as wet dreams, always whispered in an undertone. Bucky said it about homely girls, or angry girls, or any girls as long as they were girls he wanted to get alone in a room with a closing door. Bucky said it to him sometimes (not often, but now and again, with one hand on Steve’s face and his elbow pressed against the wall just above’s Steve’s shoulder, just before they kissed in the privacy of someone’s bedroom.

Bucky’s heart was a strong and wandering thing. It never stuck around very long, but it was _powerful_ when it wandered its way to you. 

Steve hadn’t seen the schematics so there was no way to be sure, but he didn’t _believe_ Vision even had a heart. The man was machine parts with a humanoid shell (or so Steve thought, and nobody had ever told him otherwise). Despite the lacking, Vision’s focus on Wanda looked like and felt like and seemed like it could only possibly be a matter of heart. 

Here they were again, Wanda fidgeting with her fingers and Vision wearing a sweater vest (in June) standing three steps behind her to the left. 

“You had something important that you needed to say?” 

Wanda turned her head just far enough she could see Vision’s encouraging nod and then she looked back at him. “I did not get to bury my brother.” (Up to that moment, Steve had not thought to be too concerned with what had become of Pietro’s corpse.) Wanda straightened her back, “I would have liked to bury him beside our parents but the cemetery where they—” 

“It was where the crater is now,” Steve said.

Wanda nodded. “Tony—” and she did not say that name easily, but like it stuck in her throat, “said that I could bury Pietro anywhere but there is nowhere in Sokovia to bury him that would have been familiar, there is nowhere that would have been home. I cremated my brother.” 

Steve looked at Vision, at how he concentrated on Wanda so completely, as if he could will her the coolness of his own confidence and his childish lack of fear. When your lifetime was measured in days and weeks, you didn’t have the experience to understand fear. 

“I am going back to Sokovia,” Wanda said. “I do want to be an Avenger. I do want to help the world with,” she raised her hands and let the energy flow red and shimmery between her fingers, “this. But, I have to finish what I thought I was starting. I have to help my country first.”

“And you’re,” Steve motioned at Vision.

“I am accompanying Ms. Maximoff.” (Yes, of course he was.) “I believe that we could assist the survivors in a meaningful way. It is human,” spoken like a machine and an old man, reading fortune cookie sayings like original thoughts, “to want to help, to want to ease suffering. Wanda and I are— _unique_. This uniqueness could benefit Sokovia significantly.”

(What was it that Rhodey had said a few days ago, something about, _it’s not an arguable point_ something about _only a monster would disagree_ , something about _how convenient_ that was.) Steve’s fingers were digging into his hips, he could feel a great pit of anger opening in the base of his gut, the lingering blackness of days past, and here he was nodded his head, drawing breath in through his nose. “You have to do what you believe is best,” not because he believed it just then, but because he believed it most of the time. “When do you leave?”

Wanda looked back at Vision who narrowed his eyes at Steve, as if they had come prepared to fight and did not know how to proceed. “As soon as we are able,” sounded more like a question falling out of Wanda’s mouth than a statement. But Vision nodded. “I will come back,” was more confident.

Steve nodded. “I know,” but he didn’t. 

“Captain,” Vision said from three steps behind. “I meant to inquire as where, exactly, Ms. Stark is in Sokovia.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Pepper knows. I guess if someone thinks it’s important that I know they’ll tell me.” Steve looked at Wanda, “she’s not the same Tony.”

“I am not going for her,” Wanda assured him. (At least not _only_ for her.) “Thank you, Steve. We should go—pack.” She went first, half watching him to be certain that he wasn’t going to call her back and ground her to her bedroom, but Vision stood a moment longer. He smiled when Wanda paused in the doorway and that was reassuring enough to allow her to leave. 

“You don’t have a lot to pack?” Steve asked.

Vision’s smile was neither comforting or condescending. It was perfectly cordial. “I require very little.” It was easy to forget that Vision was capable of more than any of them had the time or energy to imagine. Not even the man (so to speak) himself knew what he was capable of, they all had only the barest idea of that potential. “You are a good man, Captain Rogers.” 

(There was no response to that, none at all. Not even a humble denial seemed appropriate.)

“Many people say so. Even your enemies, even men who do not prefer your company, all say as much. You are a good man. I do not,” Vision paused to reconsider how he wanted to phrase his thought, “concern with myself with subjective ideas. I do not know if you are a good man, I only know that you are willing to sacrifice your own life and the lives the team that you lead to save non-combatants.”

“Innocent people,” Steve corrected.

“Innocence is a subjective idea,” Vision said. “Suppose one of those people was not innocent, suppose we saved a man who has murdered people? Suppose one of the people we protected goes on to become a criminal, suppose he or she makes the world worse for living in it? Were we correct to save them?” Vision didn’t pause long enough to hear an answer. “This is an unsolvable equation. We are not entirely human, you, Wanda and myself. I believe, because of this, wherever we go and whatever we do while we are here among the humans, we will always attract new enemies. Our power, our potential, is an affront to some and it is a challenge to others. And so, I believe, it is especially important that we are _aware_ , at all times, of the possibility that we are the unwitting catalyst to disaster.”

“I think you’re giving us too much credit,” Steve said. “There’s been evil in the world longer than there’s been me, or you, or,” he pointed after Wanda. “Her.”

“Perhaps,” Vision agreed. “Consider Mr. Stark. He is undeniably human, but he is not average. His intelligence and determination have set him apart. In the brief time since he announced himself as Iron Man he has become a constant target for men who wish to test their strength, intelligence and endurance against his. To date, Mr. Stark has survived them all; but Mr. Stark,” (sounded very much like Jarvis), “is only human.”

“Mr. Stark isn’t here right now, it’s _Ms._ Stark at the moment.”

“His absence does not mean his enemies are not preparing themselves for the next attack, it only means that he is presently defenseless.” Vision seemed pleased about how he had guided the conversation to this point, “a good man would not leave a teammate defenseless.” (Yes, he seemed very, terribly pleased by this.) Vision nodded and turned to go, stopped only after he’d faced the door to look back over his shoulder, “I must pack,” and then he strode away.

Steve was smiling but it wasn’t _funny_. He was grinning at his feet, thinking nothing but unkind things, trying to sort out how he’d gotten _here_ in this moment. (Sometimes it was a mystery and sometimes he thought he knew, sometimes he could almost pinpoint it to a single moment when Tony had smiled at him without arrogance and Steve hadn’t smiled back. He thought—it had started there, in the aftermath of a battle, and it had grown into _this_.)

# B SIDE

“You’re still here?” 

Happy looked up from the (un)comfortable chair he was lounging in. His fist was wrapped around the edge of a tablet he was reading with all the attention of an educated man (but knowing Happy it was Sunday paper comics or something like it). “Yes,” didn’t immediately lead into a stutter of protests and explanations. It was simply that, simply _yes_.

“Are you watching me?”

That made Happy look up again, made his whole face transform into a mask of confusion and sudden panic. He let the tablet fall into his lap, “do you need to be watched? Is that what I do where you’re from—because, I don’t—I mean I _do_ not so much anymore because, well, _Steve_. I’m kind of obsolete standing next to the guy and after what happened to that one guy—remember him, what’s his name? Something Perry, maybe? I don’t remember. People don’t even generally try to—” Happy lifted his hand in a grabbing sort of motion. 

“What is that? Is someone manhandling fruit? Squeezing a—” Oh.

Happy nodded solemnly.

“Who would be stupid enough?” Tony asked.

“Stupid Perry,” Happy reminded him. “They said the nerve damage isn’t permanent but, it’s been six months and the man still can’t close his right hand.”

“Steve did that?”

“What?” Happy asked. “No.” As if the idea were ludicrous (maybe it was if you hadn’t been there in the same six-foot space as Steve Rogers watching him use his shield to cut off something’s arm, if you hadn’t seen him throw a motorcycle at a group of men. Watch good old Captain America in action and suddenly the world was nothing but possibilities as to what the man would-could do). “She did. It never even went to court, because what are you going to do? Go before a judge, put your and on a Bible and swear the whole truth is you grabbed Iron Man by ass in front of her husband, Captain America?” Happy laughed to himself. “Stupid Perry.”

“Fun,” Tony said.

Happy shrugged, lifted the tablet back up and settled back into concentrate on it. He said, “do you need to be watched?” It was different this time, no tone that implied a dereliction of duty but the beginning of an idea that maybe-just- _maybe_ Tony himself was untrustworthy. Or it could have been that he’d turned down Steve’s attempts to protect him but neither of them were complimentary ideas. Happy was suspicious when he looked him over this time. 

“No.” Tony meant to go to the lab, to stare at the screen with the numbers or rifle through her open-projects to see what she was going to come up with next. (Maybe a football field, maybe Steve had a hankering to expand his sports portfolio.) But he was waylaid at the elevator by Natasha. 

There was no soft footsteps and smiles. There was no backhanded softness to her face and body. Her hand slapped against the wall six inches short of the elevator, narrowly missing his face (he wasn’t certain that was on purpose) and that brought them into very close quarters with one another. He’d noticed it in his own world, how her cheeks never pinked up when she lied, how her face was always pale, always cool, always the same no matter what she was expressing. (Because she’d been raised to be this, because she’d seen things he couldn’t imagine and done things he couldn’t comprehend.) “I appreciate your faith in me, Mr. Stark,” she said to him with a smile on her petal pink lips. “It’s always nice to have a man who thinks so little of the people around him to think highly of you—and boy, I must be something where you’re from.”

“Is this really the righ—”

A passing office worker was staring at them so blatantly he almost walked into a wall. The elevator door opened with a happy ping behind Natasha and she grabbed him by the shirt front to drag him into it. The people how had been trying to exit parted around their bodies with scoffs and coughs and dirty looks. “Jarvis take us to the top,” Natasha said.

“I’m afraid I cannot—” (Any day now, hearing that voice was going to stop hurting.)

“Jarvis,” Tony added. “Listen to the lady.”

“I’m no lady,” Natasha said.

“You don’t need to tell _me_.” He flattened his shirt when she uncurled her fist from it and that left them regarding one another in a tiny box. “To what do I own the pleasure?”

“Is it so impossible for you to believe that we are concerned about you? That we want what is best for you? That we are capable of caring about you and what would be best for you?”

Yes. Experience had taught him that every man had an ulterior motive. (Except maybe Yinsen, or maybe Yinsen too. Maybe Yinsen was looking for a way out, a way to make a difference before he died or maybe he hadn’t been. Maybe the man was exactly what he seemed to be: a good man in a bad situation.) The elevator doors opened and Tony stepped to the side to motion her to go first. He followed her and that left them standing on an empty floor staring at one another. “Don’t do that,” he said.

“What?”

“This,” he motioned at her, at her anger and her words and the pretense of her _caring_. “I’m not her. We’re not the same, we don’t have the same experiences and just because you like her doesn’t mean you give a shit about me. Now,” he slid his hands into his pockets, “I’m stuck here for now. I can’t help that. But don’t waste your time on me. I’m a big boy.”

Natasha looked like she was going to punch him. (He had not, as of yet, been punched by Natasha and in the split second that he had to process the fear of it happening, he thought it was a good streak he had going, not getting punched by Natasha.) “You really can’t imagine it, can you?”

“Steve having an original thought?”

(There it was again, how Natasha was holding herself back. The split second of fear that she was going to hit him.) “That we care about you.”

“ _Her_.” That was the sticking point; Tony could tolerate a lot, but he didn’t see the point in tolerating the charity meant for someone else. 

“ _You_ ,” Natasha snapped back. “We’re a team, and maybe you’re not _her_ , but you _are_ Tony Stark. And you’re a fucking mess. Go home, back to Malibu, take a nap, get a tan, get _better_.”

Tony didn’t have an answer to that; Natasha didn’t want one anyway. She hit the button of the elevator and excused herself without so much as another word. He was alone on the top floor, looking out through the windows at the world beyond. (Thinking not for the first, or second, or third time about those recommendations from the people that had jumped off the top of tall buildings without parachutes.) 

There it was again, the feeling in the pit of his gut, the clench of his hands, the prickling sting in his eyes. He was dying for a drink, or an escape or _relief_. “Jarvis,” he said.

“Sir.”

“Remind me about rehab?”

“Would you like to review the current alcohol rehabilitation programs available, sir?”

Would he? (He wanted to want to. He did. Looking at her life, at the people that cared, he wanted to _want_ to more than he had wanted most things in his life.)

# B SIDE

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of it. In fact, since Tony didn’t seem to be able to believe anyone was capable of expressing genuine concern for his well-being, the only logical step would be to call Pepper. (And perhaps the only reason he hadn’t done so was the annoying little sting of jealous, a bit like a scraped knee, that this Tony who wasn’t even his Tony might prefer her to him. Steve would have worked around that, he would have done the right thing.)

Instead it was Pepper calling him, her voice sounded distracted but urgent through the phone, “we have to do something about Tony. I’ve been trying my best from here but I’ve run out of excuses and explanations, the press is going to take whatever rumor they can get and they’re going to run with it. Do you know how many appearances she’s missed? Fifteen. Six of them were significant enough that I had to promote an assistant to the job of deflecting phone calls and sending regrets. That’s _insane_.”

Steve was looking out the window in his bedroom, with his elbow against the wall, his hand smoothing down the hair at the nape of his neck, thinking that there were far worse things than having to answer the phone and apologize. (Maybe there wasn’t. He wouldn’t know, he didn’t get a lot of calls.) “What’s the rumor?”

“The only rumor it ever is. I would kill someone to get a cancer rumor or absconded on a love boat of ballerina’s rumor but no, I get the same rumor every time.”

Steve closed his eyes and sighed, “pregnancy?”

“If US Weekly were ever right about anything, you’d have sixteen babies by now.”

“We’ve only been married a year,” Steve said. He wasn’t entirely up to date on his basic reproductive knowledge, but he did know it took almost a full year to have just one baby. “What do you want me to do? Go on the news, tell them we sleep in separate twin beds?”

Pepper scoffed, “I think ever since the time they got the picture of the two of you making out shirtless on the yacht people are aware you’ve had sex, Steve. It’s hard to let go of the ninety-year-old virgin headline but we have to move on.” 

It was important to remember that Pepper was not his friend. She was friendly with him because of proximity and necessity but they had not yet managed to become friends. Not the way he was friends with Sam, or Natasha, or even with Tony before he’d gone off and married her. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I know,” was a sigh. “I think it’s time we thought about a solution that buys us some time. We don’t know when she’ll be back, and we can’t keep letting the media make our excuses for us.” The pause was not necessarily an invitation for him to respond. (Talking to Pepper required more strategic thinking than infiltration.) “I am waiting for a suggestion.”

“This isn’t really my strong suit,” Steve said. “I just smile at the camera I’m pointed at, Pepper. Tony doesn’t even let me talk sometimes.” (That was in part because he never wanted to and in part because he just didn’t know what he was being asked.) “I thought you’d have suggestions.”

“She’s not my wife.”

Steve let his head fall forward so his forehead struck the wall with a dull thud. “You’re her friend. She trusts you to make these choices.”

Pepper sighed. “She wouldn’t like my suggestion and I don’t want to be the one to suggest it.” (Loyalty was funny in that way.) “In a way, the media running with the same story works best— Steve, I need you to promise me that you’ll convince her that I didn’t want to make this suggestion.”

“I’ll be sure it’s the first thing I say when I see her again,” Steve said. “What is it?”

“Miscarriage.” It was a single word like a guillotine blade, it brought an abrupt end to any good feelings. (He hadn’t even realized how good he was feeling until the resignation set in.) Pepper was quiet, barely breathing, and Steve tipped his head back and stood up straight. 

To say that Tony would _hate_ the story was an understatement for which there was no suitable comparison. It was almost a surprise that rage at the mere idea of it hadn’t forced her to materialize right in front of him. “They’d never let it go,” Steve said.

“Maybe not, but when she’s back we can spin it as a reason that you’re not trying for a baby. If we’re lucky, they’ll think it’s too tacky to ask about plans for a baby due to the trauma. I don’t like it,” Pepper said. “But it’ll explain everything we need explained: why she’s not showing up to meetings, why she wasn’t in Sokovia. It’ll buy us time for her to come home.”

Steve sighed. (Betrayal was a funny, funny thing.) He said, “we have to say something. She’ll _hate_ this, but it gives her time. We have to give her time.”

“Yes, we do,” Pepper said. She sniffled and maybe it had been obvious before that moment that she was on the verge of tears or maybe it hadn’t been but the thickness of her voice was unmistakable. “How is Mr. Stark?”

“Oh,” Steve said. He looked over his shoulder at the slept-on-couch and the breakfast dishes in the sink. “You remember that in his world he’s dating the other you?”

“It’s hard to forget.”

“I need your help,” Steve said. “He needs your help.” And the whole story spilled out, everything from Natasha relaying how she found him drunk to how he’d come to be on Steve’s step to how every-single-Avenger (from Thor to Clint fucking Barton) had bothered to mention to him Tony needed to be taken care of. Steve tried to explain how he meant it like a warm blanket and a safe bed but how Tony had interpreted judgment and prejudice. At the end of a long speech, there was no sound on the other end, Steve said: “Pepper?”

“I’m making arrangements for the flight,” Pepper said. “I can only stay overnight.”

“Thank you,” Steve said.

Pepper just sighed. “Well, I would do it for her. I don’t see it like you do, I don’t see her in him the way you do. Sometimes, I think—sometimes, I see a glimpse of it. I’ll be there this evening.” Then she hung up muttering what she’d have to rearrange to herself.

# A SIDE

Anna had given her a scarf to wear instead of a mask. It was thick, and it made her neck itch. The dirt, as fine as dust, got caked on it where she breathed in and it took on the smell of fresh-turned dirt. The smell became a taste, became a scratch in her throat. 

(But she’d woken up in worse places.)

The part of the city that was left standing spread out away from the crater like a crescent, a half dozen ruined roads led out into the country side (or they had, before the debris falling from the sky had destroyed them). Tony found a handful of men with axes and shovels working to clear the least damaged of the roads. 

“I’d like to help,” she said.

“Can you?” a man asked. Maybe he meant because she was shorter than him, or maybe because buried under her shirts, she did not seem impressive. Perhaps the man meant to imply that she didn’t sound local (as the others she spoke to said to her) or maybe it was good old fashion misogyny. It didn’t matter, he offered her the axe and pointed her to a tree they were cutting into sections to roll to either side. “You can bring us water when we are thirsty,” the man said when she didn’t immediately move to lift the axe she was holding. 

The trees must have fallen with the initial earthquake, they had crushed a car beneath them—the shattered glass covered the road beneath the stripped clean branches. There was an overturned truck in the distance. The dirt was fine as white sand, it danced every time any person made any move. The sound of men working, was a dissonant, clawing kind of noise. The axes needed to be sharpened, the blades were dulled from too many days of the same. The wood already rolled to the edges of the road gave some idea of how long these men had been working. 

Tony said, “I can do it,” when she wanted to tell him they were ineffective. When she wanted to tell them the importance of a sharp axe and the wasted labor of trying to chop a tree with a dull one. But they had come this far—working harder rather than smarter—and she couldn’t earn their trust or respect by telling them how to proceed. Instead she did her best with the axe, earning enough good will from the man that handed it to her to make him laugh behind the old T-shirt he had covering his mouth and nose. Every strike of the dull axe against the tree vibrated up her arms and into her shoulders. It made her fingers tingle. He took it from her when she lifted it again.

“You can go ahead, clear what you can carry.” He motioned forward. There were dozens of people picking broken branches and car doors and metal arms out of the debris. They were piling them by type to the side of the road. 

It took her an hour to earn her first hello, offered to her by a man as thin as a sapling, who carried chunks of dirt as large as a Rottweiler as if they weighed nothing. He had a long pink scarf around his face to protect him from the dirt, and he grunted, “you’ll do,” to her as they dropped their burdens into the same ditch made by the trees tipping. 

Two hours later, she was covered in sweat, struggling to breath through the mud that formed on the scarf with every muscle in her body singing in the divine, simple pleasure of exertion, and listening to a man with three shirts and no shoes tell a story. He was sitting on a fallen tree with his feet dangling, entertaining the company of workers.

“A blue car,” the man said. “I talked to the man that owned the house and he said they didn’t see where it fell from—everyone saw the floating city—but he said he had his family in the dining room at the time, so they didn’t see it fall, they just heard the noise it made.” None of the story was as amusing as the man was making it sound. “It’s lodged in the upstairs bedroom, right on the bed he used to sleep in with his wife—nobody was hurt!” That earned a couple of grumbles.

“How? How can nobody be hurt with a car falling into your house?”

“You’re not hurt,” did not answer the question as asked. “Now the homeowner’s got a problem because he can’t fix his roof with a car in it, but they can’t get a crane through to the house to pull it out. There’s also the problem of who the car belongs to. He said it’s got a busted headlight but all it’s tires are still inflated, and he’d hate to keep it if it belongs to someone, but his wife said if the car fell through their roof it should be theirs—”

Tony crouched next to the remains of one of the Ultron’s arms. The metal was dinged and dented from the battle, she ran her fingers down it, dug her fingernail in under a seam and tested to see how sturdy it was, the metal popped loose easily (being violently disassembled would do that). Inside, it’s body was only similar to the Iron Man armor because they were both made of metal and looked like men. 

“That’s one of them,” Artur (the very skinny man) said. 

“Where did they come from?” Tony asked.

Artur shrugged, “underground, I guess.” 

Tony picked the arm up (and it wasn’t heavy, not at all). “What happens when we clear the road?”

“I guess we can leave then,” Artur said. “We’re collecting the bits like that up here.” He led her back toward the head of the road, where the men with the dull axes were working hard and showed her where they’d piled the machine parts in a trench they’d covered over with branches. “They offered us money for all the parts we could find. Only they haven’t come back yet, so don’t think you can make anything by stealing them.” Maybe he saw the shock on her face or maybe he was just the sort that assumed anyone was only out for themselves, but he didn’t look at the pile of parts they’d assembled with anything like recognition. (Oh, the things Tony could do with those pieces and bits and a few tools.) Artur looked at her hands (the blood on her raw palms, the dirt caked into the folds of her fingers) and said, “you should go take a break. Find someone to let you wash your hands. You’ve done enough today.”

Tony rubbed her hands against her jeans, “are you quitting?” 

Artur shook his head.

Then she smiled at him, behind the scarf, and walked back to where she’d been working. He followed, at a distance, squinting at her (or the sun). He didn’t speak to her again, not even in passing, and she fell into the simplicity of picking up and putting down. 

It was good, the predictable, repetitive monotony of motion. It gave her a break from thinking, it filled up her every minute with immediacy so that she had no time for anything else. It sustained her from morning to dusk, and the exhaustion carried her through the line for food and back to Anna’s house to wash her hands in bottled water. But it didn’t put her to sleep.

In the dark, she thought of how she’d gotten here, of the people in another world, of the Tony she had replaced and how he had gotten _here_. How the entire world had gotten _here_. It filled her with anger, and anger made it hard to sleep, but anger was better than the pit of darkness in the back of her head, that old familiar yawning void that beckoned her back every time she got away.

# B SIDE

Tony had never wondered; he had always assumed. While he was charming and handsome, he was neither of those nearly as much as he was rich. He’d never been in the position to be judgmental about why women laughed at his jokes when it always ( _always_ ) benefitted him in the end, but he’d always simply assumed that it had more to do with his bank account than his personality. 

(Except, maybe, Pepper.)

But here he was, wearing a stupid T-shirt and a pair of jeans he hadn’t washed in two days, leaning his elbow on a tall table talking to Mare. (And Mare’s name was Mary, but it didn’t have a y and you wouldn’t believe how many times people said it wrong, oh you wouldn’t believe it.) “Is there a lot of money in engineering?” 

Tony shrugged with a glass of scotch in his hand, smiling over the rim of it because in any other word he was rich-beyond-imagining (and a super hero too) but here he was just a man who might be lying and she was just a (beautiful) girl that might be willing to believe him. “Depends on what you plan on doing with the degree.”

“I can’t build anything,” Mare said promptly. “And you can just look at something, you can just figure out how it works?”

There was an answer to that question, a bit of showing off he could have done, but there was also the familiar sound of heel striking floor that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up at attention. It was as Pavlovian as dogs running to meet a bell, so that he was bracing for the impact even before a hand slid across his back and the soft press of Pepper’s body leaned in against his side. Her arm was slim, and frosty pale, extending across the table with her hand out as an offering to Mare. “Hello,” Pepper said, “I’m his girlfriend.”

“My girlfriend,” he parroted just before he straightened his back and moved his arm so it was looped around Pepper’s waist. Her smile was sharp as a knife, her extended arm pulled back without a friendly handshake.

Mare said, “oh,” as she picked up her drink with a sour frown at him. There were other fish in the sea and all that. (Just none of them nearly as interesting as Tony.)

Pepper had an uncanny ability to reinstate gravity (or morality, or order, or whatever it was that Pepper carried in her clutch) to a situation that had started to drift ever so slightly off-center. Physics and philosophy were no match for the tilt of her head, the lift of her eyebrows, the way her pink lips pressed into a flat line, almost like a pout, as she looked at him without saying a word and _still_ asking what he thought he was doing with himself.

“Mare is an undergraduate,” Tony started.

“Oh?” Pepper said. “I would have guess freshman.”

“I’m sure she’ll find that complime—”

“In high school,” Pepper finished. She took the drink right out of his hand and handed it off to a waiter with a ‘can you please take this, thank you so much’ as sweet as honey. When she had disposed of the drink she turned her attention back to him. 

“I don’t think she was that yo—”

“You’re forty-five.”

Tony sighed. He hadn’t chosen the bar for it’s demographic; or, he _had_ but because he assumed that Steve would not look for him here. It wasn’t any sort of bar he’d ever purposefully gone to before. He was too young when he still at college, too out of touch with college life when he was finally old enough. It was a nice bar, in its own way, over run with young persons looking to find meaning in meaningless drinking. “You came a long way just to remind me I’m getting old,” he said. There was a bowl of peanuts on the table that he hadn’t considered eating before but now looked appetizing if for no other reason than it gave him something to do with his hands. “Who called you?”

“I called,” Pepper said. “You’re not old you’re just too old for her.”

“I have a young heart,” Tony said. He didn’t; between the shrapnel, the arc reactor and the surgery to remove both his heart had aged more than the rest of him. It was keeping up but it wasn’t _young_.

“Immature at heart,” Pepper corrected. “Not young. That girl could have been your daughter.”

“Not in this universe,” he said. He smiled, pulled his arm from around her body to put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. There was just enough alcohol in his system to enjoy how beautiful Pepper was when she was fed up with him. She was beautiful in every way, perfectly pretty no matter the circumstance, but her frustration at his antics had been one of his all-time favorite things. Nobody could get as exasperated at him as she could; nobody else had ever stuck around long enough to try. “I wasn’t going to have sex with her,” (unless she invited him to), “I’m married, and,” technically, “ _dating_.”

“Not in this universe,” Pepper said. She smiled at him as she rested her hands on the table and shook her head. “Do you love her?” Pepper asked. 

A waiter arrived, like an angel, with a fresh drink. Tony must have summoned the man with telepathy because he hadn’t even lifted a finger to order another. “Thank you,” he said (with too much sincerity) as he took the drink and lifted it to his mouth. He paused there, stared at Pepper’s unsmiling face just to be sure she wasn’t going to take it again, and then took a sip. “Come on,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not disappointing you.”

“Was it convenient?” she asked.

“What?”

“Dating me? Was it just because it was convenient? Because I was close by? Because I needed a job and you needed someone with low enough self-worth to put up with your constant abuse?”

Tony choked on the drink he was trying to swallow, but he didn’t spit it all over her. (It was a near miss, however.) “I thought you were friends with her,” Tony said. 

“I am.” 

“That doesn’t soun—”

“I love her,” Pepper said. “She’s my friend. She’s like an atomic explosion, always on the verge of complete annihilation. I get paid to control the damage and it’s _exhausting_ and I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t love her more than I needed sleep. I stay because I know that even if she can’t always say it—I _know_ that she loves me exactly the way I love her.”

Tony licked the scotch off his lips and set the glass down. The music (the setting, the universe) was all wrong for the tone of the conversation. Some poor asshole was being roped into what might be karaoke in a far corner while his semi-drunk friends cheered him on. “I love Pepper,” he said. (Just not, it felt like, how he should. Not enough, not well.) 

“Steve _loves_ his wife. When he looks at you, he sees her.”

“Well, at his advanced age, it can’t be a surprise that his eyesight is—” 

“You’re being a dick,” Pepper said shortly. She lifted her hand to wave over a waiter and she ordered a martini, a _vodka_ martini—extra _dry_ with extra _olives_ (at least three olives)—before she looked back at him without missing a beat. 

“I don’t know that I like this side of you, Ms. Potts.”

“Well, things are different here,” she said. “You’re not required to like all sides of me, Mr. Stark. I’m entitled to have sides you don’t like, and to use them when the occasion calls for it.” Her lips curled up into something genuine, but her fingers flattened against the table again. “This isn’t pity, Tony. This is concern, this is what you do for the people you love—if you can’t understand that, if you really _can’t_ , it doesn’t matter what you do because we’ll never be able to help you.”

The martini appeared with perfect timing, she tasted it and wrinkled her nose but thanked the waiter anyway. When they were alone, Tony turned his glass on the table top and looked at the young-and-reckless idiots making fools of themselves. “I don’t want to go back. I don’t have that anymore—I don’t have Malibu, I don’t have Jarvis, I don’t have any of it. All I have is—” (Empty rooms, and guilt, and _nightmares_.) 

“Me,” Pepper said. “And _I_ ’m telling you, come home.”

(And oh _God_ , how much those words hurt. How they took the breath right out of him.) Tony picked up his glass, “that’s a very direct sort of flirting, Ms. Potts.”

“Well, unlike some men, I know what I like and I know how to get it,” she answered. Her fingers curled around the stem of her glass and she pulled it back toward her. “How long did it take?” Before he could pretend not to understand, she added, “to convince me you were serious? It had to have taken a long time.”

Tony took a drink to that, “it wasn’t easy. I have a reputation.”

“I’m sure,” Pepper agreed. Her body leaned in against his, familiar enough that it tore through his defenses like they were nothing but damp tissue paper. “ _But_ , does your reputation include a semi-permanent installation of the Westboro Baptist Church members holding God hates Fags signs outside your office?”

“It does not,” Tony agreed.

“Does it include not one, not two, but five different lawsuits alleging you used your influence and charisma to make young girls into lesbian scientists?” 

Tony snorted, “I collect paternity suits.” (Dozens of them, from women he might have slept with, all alleging the same claim. He had yet to turn up with a child, but he know enough about statistics to know it wasn’t _impossible_ that there was one.) “Did any of those cases go to trial?”

“No,” Pepper said. Her arm around his shoulders tightened when she took a drink and loosened again, “when I finish this we’re leaving.” 

“To get on a plane?”

“To get some sleep,” Pepper corrected, “we leave on the plane in the morning. I’ve booked a very nice hotel suite and I’m willing to let you sleep on the floor by my bed if you’re very good.” Her smile was fond, but the arm around his shoulders was possessive. Maybe to remind him he was taken or to advertise the fact to anyone that might have thought differently. 

“That’s very generous of you,” he said.

“I’m very generous,” she agreed. “Finish your drink. The driver’s outside waiting.”

There was no telling how he felt about that; the presumption that he’d obey. On the one hand, he hated presumptions (and obeying) and on the other hand, it wasn’t so different than any other time she’d come to collect him from a bad idea. It wasn’t so different at all.


	11. Chapter 11

# B SIDE

One nightmare fed into another; the sleeping one a familiar old friend and the waking a bitter kind of taste on his tongue. It wasn’t the first (wasn’t the second, wasn’t the fortieth, and _hopefully_ , would not be the last) time he had woken up Pepper when the nightmare reached its zenith. His grasping hands and his sudden start of wakefulness had the way of abruptly waking whoever happened to be nearby. (Nightmares were indiscriminate in that manner.) Pepper’s disgruntled objection to being rudely woken wasn’t new either.

Her sleep-rough voice, full of confusion, mumbling, “what?” at him as if he had _intended_ to land an elbow into the soft part of her arm. “What’s wrong?” Her dainty fingertips were rubbing her eyes as she squinted at him.

No, that was all old hat (as they say) but how he’d gotten _here_ to this hotel bed with his blue jeans still on, that was the new bit. Pepper had stood three feet to the left of him glaring daggers at aspiring bed partners and frowning over the drinks in his hand but she hadn’t ever been the one handing him glasses and inviting him over for cuddles. 

Hangovers were shit; but Tony hadn’t (yet) woken up without his memories. They were all there banging around conspicuously with the remnants of a familiar nightmare. Tony shoved himself off the bed before she could get her soft grip on his arm. 

“Tony?” was just as confused now as it had been a moment ago. “Where are you going? Come back.”

No-no-no- _No_ , because this Pepper had ulterior motivations, the way all of them did, and that meant she was an unknown in a world that was full of self-proclaimed allies that were all dressed up like the people he knew in another world. (For that matter, how the fuck had he come to be in this situation, how had he gotten _here_? There was a brief tear in the fabric of reality and he’d slipped a bit too far to the right and fell into a bed that didn’t belong to him, sleeping next to a husband that wasn’t his and they were all assuming (but they didn’t _know_ that she’d ended up where he came from). It wasn’t how had he gotten here, this universe and this location because he knew that he didn’t know, but how had he gotten _here_. How had he gotten just beyond the grip of warm blankets and the outstretched fingers of Pepper God-Damn Potts. 

“ _Tony_ ,” she said. It was a Mother’s tone, not a lover’s, the exact sort of head-tilt that accompanied a stern rebuke. (But, Pepper wasn’t his lover here, wasn’t his girlfriend, wasn’t even his friend because she was, like they all were, loyal to the woman that Tony was _not_.) “Come back to bed.”

“Why are you here?” he asked. (After all this time, the too-fast, too-hard thud of his heart was almost a relief. Here he was, whole and still damaged, no better and no worse for the wear.) While he was waiting for a response, he was searching for his shoes, left somewhere between the bed and the door. 

“I’m worried,” Pepper said. But she didn’t get up. She just crossed her legs under the blankets, let her hands fall into the little nest her bent knees made. Her hair was in rats’ nests but her face was perfectly placid, perfectly still. It was her _argument_ face when she’d made up her mind long before she let him argue his side. (Her debate face, however, her debate face was beautiful.) “We’re all worried about you.”

“ _Her_ ,” Tony said. 

Pepper’s lips flattened, behind her cheeks her teeth were pressed together as hard as she could manage. It took a beat, and a breath, and a quiet reminder to be civil, before she managed to say, “is it so unbelievable that people could be worried about you?”

“No,” (sometimes). “Is it so unbelievable that I have friends?”

“Yes,” Pepper said.

Tony found his shoes under a table and dragged them out with his feet. There was a chair to sit in, and his socks balled up inside of the shoes. “Honesty,” he said with his busy fingers pulling his socks on. “That’s not so hard is it? I’m sure that you love _her_ , and I’m sure that you mean _well_ but, this isn’t about me.” He stood up once his shoes were on, felt his hands gripping for a jacket he hadn’t worn and shrugged the words off. 

“This is about you,” Pepper said. “We’re worried, we just want what’s best for—”

“Her,” he finished.

Pepper threw the blankets back off her legs and got to her feet. He was wearing the clothes he’d been abducted in, but she was dressed in sleep clothes, stalking across the space between them. Her bare feet were soundless, but the anger on her face was pink-spots on porcelain. “I don’t know how it is in your world b—”

“No,” Tony agreed, “you don’t know how it is. You’re guessing, you’re all guessing. You think I’m hiding some great tragedy, that I need to be taken home and put to bed. You have no idea what the world’s like where I’m from, what _I’m_ like, what _you_ ’re like.”

“Then tell me,” Pepper snapped back. “Tell me how your world handles this—” her hand motioned at his whole body. “How they react to your reckless drinking, and moping, and _instability_.”

(And maybe that hurt because he’d been waiting to hear those words come out of her-but-not- _her_ face for a very long time. Or maybe it hurt to be reduced to nothing by people who did a great deal of pretending to care. Or maybe it was only the nightmare and the hangover working together.) “You have no comparison, you can’t decide I’m unstable when you have no basis for what I am like when I’m stable.”

“Oh, we have a comparison.”

“For _her_ ,” he corrected. He spread his arms, “Admit it, admit that this isn’t about me, that this is about her. That you’re here because of her, not me. This isn’t about _me_. Come on,” he could feel the anger, like heat, radiating off her skin.

Pepper crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re concerned,” must have been the company line because she wasn’t giving. It was a surprise to her (not to him, he knew exactly how this was going to end) when he reached the door because her voice was slapped full of shock when he yanked the door open, “Tony!”

The hallway was quiet without her, he didn’t run but he didn’t exactly walk either.

# A SIDE

For as long as she had known him (and she had known him a long time now) Happy Hogan had never mastered the art of looking inconspicuous. He had, at very least, manage to not look quite as out of place as the man who was wearing his face in this awful universe. There he was, lingering around the last turn before the debris littered road, with a bag slung over his shoulder and an (absolutely filthy) wheeled suitcase standing at attention at his side. He was dressed in casual clothes with boots and paper-thin white mask covering his mouth but there was no mistaking him. 

Either he felt her stare or he recognized her face from pictures, (Happy was very good with faces), as soon as he looked at her he said, “Tony?”

It had never felt as much like a question as it did right then, with her body singing in yesterday’s exhaustion and her hands covered in splinters and little cuts. She’d been thinking about what could be made of those leftover Ultron bits, what the repurposed equipment could be used for, (and how she could retrieve it without arousing suspicion). “Happy.”

“You have the same eyes,” Happy announced. His posture relaxed just a bit, just enough that he wasn’t broadcasting his anxiety to everyone that walked past. “I brought,” he touched the bag, and the handle of the suitcase, “some things.”

“I didn’t need things.” She balled up her fists and slid them into her pockets. 

Happy’s expression conveyed his disbelief in that statement so completely she couldn’t even pretend to misunderstand it. He dusted the comment off without so much as addressing it, and he reached into the bag to pull out a pair of work gloves. “He says his hands are important, he does a lot of precision work—little,” Happy’s fingers squished together, leaving only a sliver of space between them, “pieces and wires. A lot of wires.” Happy held the gloves out. “Circuits.”

Tony didn’t move to accept the gloves because taking them was giving herself an advantage that the others didn’t have. (At least not all of them.)

“Tiny screws,” Happy suggested. “Some stickers I think.”

No part of her wanted to smile at him, but it was tugging at her lips, “stickers?”

“Yeah,” Happy assured her, “he has one of those machines, the label makers, you know he has to have his name on everything.”

(She had noticed that. It was amazing that his underwear didn’t have the company logo on them.) Happy shook the gloves in the air and she reached out to grab them, so he would stop, and the people that were heading out to work had no reason to stop and stare are them. “And whose idea was this?” (It wasn’t Natasha’s, because unless things were very different in this world, sending Happy to keep an eye on her wouldn’t benefit anyone at all. Happy’s loyalty was simple, uncomplicated, and the world that was vast and messy to Natasha was small and clean for Happy.) 

“Pepper,” Happy said. 

“Pepper?”

“Yes,” Happy reached into his bag again and pulled out a second pair of gloves. “I’ve got a lot of these, Pepper said she’d send more through a charity front if you thought it would help.”

“I don’t need you here.” (Want was a bit more complicated; because she hadn’t wanted anyone here but the people that lived here. She had wanted the solitude and the silence that this place afforded her; just the sweat and the motion that worked off her anger to something more tolerable. But there was Happy, sweet, and uncomplicated Happy, looking at her in a way that telegraphed his every thought even before he got the words into his own throat.)

“Sorry, you’re not my boss anymore, Tony.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Pepper,” Happy said.

“Pepper works for me.”

Happy laughed at that. His smile took up his whole face as he pulled the gloves on. “Pepper doesn’t work for you, boss,” (the fond nickname was a direct rebuttal of his assertion he didn’t work for Tony), “she works at Stark Industries. She’s the boss. You’re,” he hesitated there, narrowed his eyes and tried to work out the words he wanted, “a shareholder.”

Tony rested her hands on her hips, “you’re not going, anywhere are you?”

“Not until she says.”

“Well, I guess we should get to work then.” She motioned him to follow after her. Happy shifted the bag on his shoulder and reached down to pull the rolling case after him. It was plain, black, made out of what looked a good deal like fabric but there was no mistaking the little blinking light just beneath the zipper pull. Whatever was contained inside was well protected, so she saw no reason not to motion to a patch of dirt off the side of the road, “just leave those things there.”

Happy laid the bag on top of the suitcase and fixed his mask as he looked out at the road. They’d managed to clear a two foot stretch of it of everything but the dirt and the leaves that had wilted off the fallen trees. A group of men were standing around a car, mumbling back and forth among themselves about how best to move it. It was only half a car, half crushed, with only one inflated tire and no steering wheel to speak of. They couldn’t get a tow truck out because the men at the front of the road hadn’t finished clearing the trees. “This is a mess.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed.

“Are they using axes?”

“Yes.”

Happy was caught between being impressed and being horrified, and it settled like neutrality on his face. “Where do we start?” he asked.

Tony showed him where they threw the limbs, and where they threw the Ultron parts and where they stacked the twisted, broken metal. They started where she’d stopped the day before, working without talking through the morning.

# A SIDE

Steve did not consider himself to suffer from vanity, but he could think of no other reason that he found himself in the weight room thinking distracted half-thoughts about how he was going to be zipped into some tight bright-blue outfit and put on TV. The circumference of his biceps wouldn’t affect his ability to lift a motorcycle; but there he was, nonetheless, thinking that his arms were looking a bit weaker this morning than they had the night before.

His thoughts went in circles, cut in half with zigzags that made all the edges sharp. There was a half-tender notion of how it was unfair (or was it) that heroes (that was, if he was considering himself a hero still), like Tony didn’t have to worry about what their arms looked like because nobody could see them anyway. In fact, they could have swapped out the Tony this world knew for a woman with pretty calves and nobody would have known the difference. But he was thinking of Wanda looking right up into his face, at how calm she was now that she’d made a choice.

No, he wasn’t, he was thinking about how Vision sounded-like Jarvis, but he followed Wanda around like a God-damn puppy, sick with love and corrupted with devotion for her. It was unfair that Vision was a newborn, that he should have been preoccupied with the process of learning how to live but there he was accompanying a woman he had (apparently) thrown his lot in with. (And maybe, Steve wanted to know _why Wanda_ in equal measure with _how had it been so easy?_ Because Steve was ninety-something (give or take 70 years) and he still hadn’t figured out how to love someone like that.) 

So maybe he was thinking about how it was vain to worry about his arms, but he was lifting weights anyway. Or maybe he was thinking about how love was a great ideal and a silly process, or how he just hadn’t figured it out yet, or maybe he had loved Peggy with all that intensity, or maybe he hadn’t loved anyone in a way that mattered. For all he knew, he could have been Bucky with his wandering heart, full of momentary consuming passions. 

Loving Peggy could have been (it hadn’t felt like it but it _could_ have been) nothing more than a momentary passion, the natural consequence of a lifetime of nursing bruises and aching lungs, of carrying the weight of being underestimated and overlooked. Because Peggy had looked _at_ him with something that wasn’t precisely obligatory kindness even before he’d been transformed. All their talk of dancing, of the right partners and waiting, was nothing more than talk. It had felt real, but who was he to say what was real when they’d never had the chance to make a real go of it? 

(And who was he to say it wasn’t real, when he still thought of her with a twist in his gut.)

He was interrupted by a shadow and Colonel Rhodes coming to a brief stop just outside of reaching distance, looking exactly like a man that had already made up his mind about whatever he’d come to discuss. “Do you have a minute?”

(Steve had an infinity of minutes, a never-ending stretch of possible time. But that wasn’t what Rhodey mean to ask him.) “Depends on what you need.” Steve set the weight down and straightened up to face Rhodey. 

“I’m not sure that allowing Wanda and Vision to leave the states is a good idea.”

That was hardly a surprise; the only thing Colonel Rhodes _was_ sure about was (all of a sudden) that Steve was barely fit for his job. Steve wiped his face with the towel he’d brought and hung it over his shoulder. “Any particular reason?”

“Tony’s not here to make sure they get back _in_ ,” Rhodey said. 

“I wasn’t aware Tony was the only reason they got here in the first place.” He hadn’t meant it to sound so full of disbelief, but the worlds puffed up with indignation as soon as they left his tongue, they filled up with hot air that boiled, bristled and _popped_. Of course, he didn’t know because Tony wouldn’t have told him, would have just assumed he didn’t care or he wouldn’t understand (or both, he wouldn’t care to understand). Whatever it took to get a recently created semi-person into the US required more intelligence than Steve had to understand. 

Rhodey smiled with barely contained distaste, he said, “they don’t exactly grant visas to former international terrorists and men that are made of stolen metal, a shiny gem from another planet, and the leftovers of a computer program. Vision and Wanda have no legal right to be here, the only reason they are here is because of Tony and he’s not here to guarantee they can get _back_ if they leave.”

(Vision didn’t need a visa, he needed a patent. Visas were for humans, not for things that had been made.) 

“I could tell them,” he conceded, “I don’t think it would make a difference. They’ve decided this is something they have to do.”

“And that’s good enough for you?”

“It’s not for you?” Steve’s hands had found their way to resting on his hips while Rhodey’s arms were crossed over his chest, his face a growing dark cloud, making his forced smile drift downward at the edges. Any second now (very soon, one might say) he would be out-right frowning. “They’re doing what they feel like they’ve got to do.”

That one must have stumped Rhodey, it must have pushed his brain into a corner because he didn’t answer right away. No, he just stood and stared, as if he had never met anyone quite like Steve (and he shouldn’t have, because as near as he could tell he was one of a kind). “What happens if they can’t get back?”

“I guess we worry about that if it happens.” Steve sighed, “we don’t have Tony, but we have Hill and all of the people that work for her—if they can’t get Wanda and Vision back, if Wanda and Vision want to come back, then we’ll have to think of something. I don’t know what connections Tony has, but I do have some idea of what Maria Hill is capable of and this doesn’t feel like it’s beyond her ability.”

Rhodey was not happy.

“Not everything is about Tony,” Steve said. Because it wasn’t. Because _this_ wasn’t; or it hadn’t been. (It was now, Steve wasn’t stupid enough to keep pretending otherwise. As soon as his name was spoken, the whole thing had become Only About Tony. Like everything else.) “Not everything is up to Tony to fix for us.” (A fact that Mr. Stark himself seemed incapable of grasping.) 

Rhodey just shook his head, smiling like he was talking himself out of saying things he’d regret, just before he turned to the side, facing away from him, and said, “I’ve got,” (nothing at all), “work. Thank you for you time,” was spoken exactly like _go fuck yourself_.

# B SIDE

Perhaps the only useful lesson he’d learned from Howard (beyond what exactly fondue was, and perhaps how not to treat women), was the practical application of learning people’s names. Howard was arrogant and buoyant and almost unlikeable, but despite those outright shortcomings he commanded respect because he was brilliant, and he had _money_. Respect could save you from repercussion most of the time, but it didn’t endear people to you. No, Howard got people to like him by treating them with warmth: greeting them by their name, asking after their family, offering a smile or a handshake when it was necessary. 

Steve didn’t have the space to store every name of every person he’d ever met but, he’d managed to remember the important ones. The security guards in the lobby of the Avenger’s tower (as laughable as that notion was). He knew a selection of the women that got onto and off the elevator on the lower floors. He knew every member of Hill’s (frankly overwhelmingly) large staff. 

The benefit to knowing just enough names to secure good favor was that he could redirect every conversation away from himself, or the Avengers. So, when he got on the elevator in the lobby to a handful of suspicious looks, he was able to smile and say, “Clara,” with enough authority to get a polite smile in return. “How are you?”

Clara worked on the fourth floor and she had two dogs (the size of small horses, she said) that she loved very much despite the shedding. She was friendly with small talk, always eager to share a story about her pets and that took up time in the elevator (if only for a minute) long enough for the stares to abate.

Upstairs, remembering everyone’s name didn’t save him from a single stare. The entire staff, half encased in cubicles, managed to stare at him with some degree of suspicion or interest. A few of them were trying not to notice him, as if they wanted to be spared an embarrassing moment of accidental eye contact. The only person that looked directly at him, that smiled and walked up to speak to him was Maria herself. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” wasn’t (on the surface,) a very polite greeting but it was practically friendly coming from her. 

“I have a room here,” he countered.

“Not on this floor.” She didn’t touch him, lean in or motion, but somehow, she managed to get him to walk next to her, away from the crowd of eyes and eyes that were waiting to learn some new gossip to share. When they were away (not far but just a bit) she said, “it may not be my place to say, but it might be in everyone’s best interest if you could keep your new husband away from the team.”

The request wasn’t as surprising as the fact that she was saying it. Steve sighed and made no attempt to hide it. “The team wil—”

“The team is fine,” Maria cut in. 

Of course, they were. “What’s your opinion?”

“About this Tony?”

Steve nodded.

Maria was quiet a moment and then shrugged. “I’m not sure that I’m entitled to have an opinion. I don’t know anything about him. I do know what this team is like when it’s trying to protect its own, and in my professional opinion, they honestly have no idea if they think this new person is a friend or an enemy.” 

“Thank you for telling me,” Steve said. And just to drag the conversation away from the pit it felt like it was falling into, he said, “what are we doing about—”

“Oh no,” Maria said. She raised her hands to motion him away, “go on, you know the rules. I learned my lesson about your innocent looking face. Go. Get out.” 

Steve didn’t laugh but he smiled, and Maria smiled back just enough to let him know she didn’t really harbor any ill will toward him (just because of the time he’d talked her into giving him details on a mission he wasn’t allowed to go on, just because Tony had found out, just because she had forced every staff member to attend a series of educational lectures about the importance of protocol). He left her to her army of cubical workers and went to find Natasha.

# B SIDE

There was no dissecting the interior workings of Happy Hogan’s mind. Tony had given up attempting to work out how information entered the man’s head and exited again, about what parts he retained and which parts he put emphasis on and what parts were deemed worthless. Happy had a unique method to his thinking, so there was no telling where he’d show up or what ideas he’d have when he arrived. Yet, there he was greeting the hostess of the family-owned diner Tony had found after an hour of walking, there he was assuring the woman that he was only meeting a friend and pointing out Tony sitting alone in a booth on a slow morning. Happy came over with a genial look on his face, ordered coffee and a cinnamon roll without looking at a menu before he sat down. 

Tony was nursing his third cup of coffee, contemplating his poor breakfast choices, not feeling particularly charitable about anything. “Who sent you?”

Happy handed the bag across the table to him. It was light enough to be nothing but a few pairs of a clothes and a few handheld devices, maybe. “Nobody,” he said. (It was easy to tell when Happy was lying, because he had a face meant for many things but not for lying to his friends.) “I just thought you could use the company,” his shoulders lifted up and dropped. 

“And you just happened to know where I am?”

“Pepper’s tracking your phone.”

Tony reached into his pocket and pulled it out, turned the phone over and over, pulled the back cover off to look at the insides. It wasn’t any phone that he had built, or designed, but some standard-issue sort of thing. He didn’t have tools, time or patience to bother with rendering it useless to Pepper while still being useful to him, so he pulled the battery out of the back and dropped it into a glass of ice water. 

Happy’s eyebrows considered his actions petulant but he voiced no open disapproval. “I don’t have to stay if you don’t want me to,” was the nicest offer he’d gotten yet. “I just, I woke up this morning and I felt like I should be with her, you know? I can’t explain it. I felt like she needed me. That’s kind of stupid,” he interrupted himself to smile at the waitress, to flirt a bit, and thank her for the cinnamon roll and the coffee. When he was finished, he turned his plate aimlessly on the table as he said, “that’s stupid isn’t it? She hasn’t needed me in years. I’m Dum-E, I’m obsolete.”

“You’re not obsolete,” Tony said. “Neither is Dum-E.” He’d lost his whole fucking house, and everything he had thought was safe inside of it, and when he went picking through the wreckage, he had dug out Dum-E first. 

“Thanks Tony. I appreciate that.” Happy didn’t believe him for a minute, but he was willing to accept it at face value. “Anyway, I had to get away from the tower. The air was getting thick.” He picked up a fork and poked the cinnamon roll as if checking to be sure it was really dead, and when he was satisfied he wasn’t eating a live animal he picked it up to take a bite. 

Tony didn’t want to ask, and Happy wasn’t going to just say it. Oh no, he was perfectly content to allude to something and then to pretend as if it were nothing at all. Tony sipped his coffee, reminded himself not to fall for it, not to give in, but he was working out what exactly would make the air in the Avenger’s tower unbreathable and how it would relate to him and what could be done about it, no part of him wanted to say a damn word but he was blurting out, “something happen?”

“Hm?”

“At the tower.”

Happy wiped his mouth, mumbled something like, “oh,” in between the half-chewed food and paused long enough to finish chewing before he said, “Steve was shouting. He doesn’t raise his voice very often. Or ever. I didn’t hear all of it; he wasn’t happy.”

“About?” (Tony might have cracked a joke about the sort of thing that would upset old man Steve Rogers but occurred to him that he didn’t know what genuinely upset the man because he couldn’t swear he’d ever seen him entirely happy or entirely angry outside of a fist fight.) 

“Oh,” was the first moment Happy realized he’d talked himself into a corner, his nervous smile and his twitchy fingers were all looking for a way out. “Well, I didn’t hear much.” (That meant he heard it all.) “I think he was just upset because everyone was— I mean, they’re just trying to do what she would want? But Steve is, Steve isn’t, it’s just that Steve is very protective of her? I didn’t even think they liked each other, you know? But, he doesn’t like it when people behave a certain way in her name, he says that it puts unfair blame on her, he says that people have to take the responsibility for their own choices, that Tony isn’t there to take the blame for them.”

(Well, wasn’t that a novel fucking idea.)

Happy looked uncomfortable, “he’s angry because of how they treated you. He really loves her, you know. Nobody can explain it, hell I was there when it was happening, and I can’t tell you how it happened, but he does. He loves her.”

“I’m not her,” Tony said.

“No,” Happy agreed. That was defeat, downcast eyes and fidgety fingers, that was anger and hurt and loss. It was not knowing how to go forward, an honest kind of helplessness and then Happy just shrugged it off. “But, you are kind of? You’re not her, but you’re someone’s Tony Stark. Tony’s my friend, she’s been my friend for a long time. I’ve been by her side through a lot, and I think that she’d want me to make sure you had a friend here. So, as your friend,” Happy said, “or potential friend,” an important distinction, “what would you like to do?”

“Excuse me?”

“You can do anything,” Happy said (somewhat optimistically, as if he’d already forgotten the fact that Tony did not belong here and could not currently return to his own home), “nobody here knows who you are. She can’t even buy groceries without someone trying to take her picture or get an autograph, or protesters. There’s always protesters somewhere.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” Tony conceded. The past several days had shown a noticeable absence of people spitting in his direction, anyone calling out how they loved him, or anyone trying to talk him into giving them a small loan of a million dollars. “What would a couple of single guys do with their day?”

“You’re not single,” Happy reminded him. There was an edge in his voice, a sternness that was a rebuke. Whether he meant because all Tony Starks belonged to Steve Rogers(es?) or he meant Tony was dating Pepper, it was _important_ that Tony understood the wasn’t _single_. “Sports, I think,” Happy said. 

“Sports?”

Happy nodded. He picked up his cinnamon roll again. He was smiling to himself as he did it, clearly amused by his own attempt at humor. 

Tony snorted, he leaned back in his seat. “Sure,” he agreed. “Sports. You seem like a man who bowls. Let’s go bowling.” 

Happy choked, coughed, took a drink, coughed more and with his face red and his voice wheezing said, “ _you’re_ going to bowl?” Tony nodded and Happy shrugged, “ok. Sure. Let’s go bowling.”

# A SIDE

Wanda’s departure gathered very little fanfare; a company car took her to a company airport that took her home to Sokovia. There was no party to wish her well, no gathering of friends and team-mates to see her off. It was only Steve standing where he could see the car depart, and Sam who had come to wish them the best. (He was awkward in the way a man who knew very little about the people he was wishing good-bye to might be. Charming, efficient and ultimately hollow with his well-wishes and good-byes. If anything, his presence seemed to make both Wanda and Vision want to leave faster.)

“Captain Rogers,” was Vision’s final words to him, “I wish you success.” Whether he meant in making a team out of the scraps of his last one and a few new recruits that were polar opposites, or in pulling on his performing suit and lifting heavy things there was no telling. (Maybe he meant, in general, maybe he was only attempting to be polite.) 

“Take care of her,” Steve had said in return. Not because Wanda wasn’t capable of taking care of herself, but because she needed someone to be on her side. (And, well, you couldn’t do better than a man worthy of lifting Mjolnir, even if he were a newborn.) 

“Are we betting?” Natasha asked him. She always surprised him, just enough. He knew for sure that she wasn’t capable of appearing from thin air, but she moved so quietly that it felt that way. 

“It might be bad taste to gamble over your team mates.”

Natasha shrugged. “You know she’s going to find Tony there.”

Yes, he did know that.

“Those are two women that I wouldn’t put in a room together, Steve. I’m surprised you told her that she could go.” Natasha didn’t touch him, but her body was leaning in a way that seemed to suggest that she was constantly reminding herself not to. They had touched plenty in the years since they started working (once, most memorably, she had kissed him to evade detection) but rarely outside of a mission. 

“Why does everyone say that?” he turned so he was looking at her directly, instead of sideways. “None of us _have_ to be here. Why would I stop her?”

Natasha scoffed. “Oh,” was amused, “I forgot that you think people are going to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” No matter how hard he tried (and he didn’t, honestly, try very hard), he couldn’t figure out where Natasha’s allegiance lay exactly. He put his trust in her and (now and again) his life in her hands but that was all blind faith because he had no idea which way she’d go if it came right down to it. Men like him weren’t born with the same set of survival instincts.

“Nothing. I’m surprised you let her go.”

“How would I stop her?”

Natasha shrugged. “I think its already established that it’s difficult to stop her, but I didn’t think that you would have just let her walk out of the door? We barely know what she’s capable of, we barely know what _she_ thinks is the right thing to do—”

Steve sighed, “she was a kid.”

That made Natasha roll her eyes, made her hands on her hips twitch and her face relax into an unreadable mask. All the people in the news that knew very little about what the Avengers were (really, beneath the glamour and the headlines), they all had their ideas about who was dangerous and why but none of them understood what this woman, right here, was truly capable of. Neither did Steve, right then. “That line is getting real old, Steve. She isn’t a child. She wasn’t one when she volunteered to be a human science experiment—you weren’t, she wasn’t. At some point it doesn’t matter how old you are, all that matters is what you’ve done.”

“I guess I’d rather believe people want to be good.”

“All people?” 

“Yes, _all people_ ,” Steve said. He could feel the trap that he was walking into, caught up to what she was about to say seconds before she opened her mouth and he put his hands up to stall what she was going to say. “Not _everything_ is about Tony. You want me to say it? Tony’s a _great_ guy. Let’s give him another medal or a statue or an award because I love reading the paper and skipping the paragraph listing his achievements.”

Natasha’s eyebrows lifted up just slightly, the edges of her mouth quirked up. “I was going to say Hitler,” (there was no telling if that was true or not), “but maybe we should talk about why you immediate assu— Steve.”

He walked back toward the building, away from her and the conversation the empty driveway where Wanda and Vision had been but weren’t. Natasha’s hand slid around his arm and he shook her off without thinking about it. She didn’t try again, didn’t fall into step behind him, didn’t move at all but stood in place where he’d pushed her hands off. 

“He is,” was her voice from a distance. 

Steve’s hand was on the handle of the door, his body half turned to look back at her. 

“We know who and what Tony is. He’s arrogant, he’s egocentric, he’s,” her arms lifted and dropped again, “but, when it matters, when people are in danger, when _we_ need him, no matter what, he’s _there_. You don’t have to like him to believe he’s on our side.”

The door opened easily when he pulled on it (with too much force), “there’s a difference between _on our side_ and _good_ , Natasha. He’s always been on our side, that doesn’t mean he’s always been good.”

“Bucky killed Howard Stark,” Natasha said. Right out in the open, right in front of the grass, the sky, the bricks and God, she said it like she’d known it for years. As if she’d been burning up from the inside out (just like him, watching Tony with a burning coal in his gut, waiting and waiting for exactly the right time and the right tone to finally say something). 

“That wasn’t him,” Steve countered. (It was important to remember that, to remember that Bucky was under-mind-control, that he wasn’t himself, that he didn’t-have-a-choice. It was important to remember that.) “That isn’t the same as what Tony—” 

“Fifty bucks,” Natasha interrupted. “Fifty dollars that Wanda is going to find Tony, and this is going to end in a fight.” She even stepped forward enough to extend her hand where he could take it. She was perfectly patient, watching him work through it. 

“I’m going to tell him about his parents,” Steve said instead. (Because he was, sooner or later, because he had to.) He looked at her hand, “I’m not taking that bet. Wanda went home to help.”

Natasha shrugged, she let her hand fall. “For everyone’s sake, I hope so.” (Because this Tony wasn’t their Tony and there was no telling what this woman would do in a fight. No telling at all.)

# A SIDE

Artur lingered by the growing stack of machine bits. They weren’t all from Ultron, some of them were only metal that had been twisted out of recognizable shape. It didn’t seem to matter much to the people that were collecting them. The men and women that were dragging themselves back from a long day of trying to clear the road dropped what they’d found whether it was metal as big as pebbles or what must have been crushed robot heads, they carried it the whole length of the road, back into what remained of their town. 

Happy was among them, somewhere back in the line, with sweat so thick on his body it had formed a paste with the dust that was kicked up by all the bodies moving around them. Tony had already dropped her pile in, had taken the gloves off and tucked them into her pocket. She was crouching at the edge of the pit, looking at what kind of raw materials she had to work with (thinking a great deal of pieces wasn’t worth much without a power source, and that was something she simply didn’t have presently). 

Artur said, “you are somebody,” to her. He motioned his hand outward toward the world beyond the sound of the bullhorn and the call of the men who had been sent to remind them of curfew. “You don’t belong here.”

Tony ran her hands down the stiff, filthy thighs of her jeans as she stood, and shrugged, “we’re all somebody.”

That made the skinny man laugh, his lips parted just enough to show his teeth and he shook his head. “No.” It was a curious word, full of forgiveness for how she was stupid, and condemning for how she was pretending all at once. “Not how you are somebody,” he motioned back at Happy, at the bags that had been left by the roadside, blinking more noticeably in the dark, “he was sent here for you. If you and I were the same, I would have a man sent here to me.” Artur lifted his arm, spread it to indicate the empty space where no man had been sent to help (or guard) him.

“I didn’t—”

Artur shook his head, lifted his dirty palm up to stall her. “A lot of men have come to our city, good ones, bad ones,” he shrugged. “The good ones stay; the bad ones take what they want and go.” Then he glanced significantly downward into the pile. “We don’t care if you are somebody where you are from. We care what you are doing here.”

“I’m here to help,” Tony said.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” He looked back at Happy again, made a soft face at him. “Maybe not him.”

“Happy’s stronger than you think,” Tony said. At very least, her Happy was stronger than he was given credit for. (Or, at very least, he didn’t quit. Even when maybe he should have.) “We’ll both see you tomorrow.”

Tony got both bags before Happy made it through the line to drop his metal parts. She was standing at the end of the road, tapping her fingertips on the top of the rolling suitcase (thinking what sort of things Pepper might have sent her) with the duffel bag hanging off her shoulder. Happy was exhausted, and filthy, and still he was offended that she’d retrieved the bags. 

“I would have—”

“One of us regularly manipulates a two-hundred-pound metal suit, and one of us thinks being on a diet means only eating one dessert.” She smiled, and Happy frowned at her. “He would have thought it was funny,” because her Happy would have.

“Oh,” he agreed, “I see his standard for funny is lower than mine. I’ve got sophistication.” Even as he said it, he was taking the duffel off her shoulder and putting it over his. There was some side-eyeing directed at the rolling suitcase but either he didn’t feel like he’d win or he didn’t have the energy to try. “So,” he said, “this is Sokovia?”

“Yes,” Tony agreed. She motioned him toward the charity set up that provided food and baby wipes. (And if you were very lucky, sometimes they would let you use real water to wash your face and hands.) They joined the growing line, looking conspicuous and unwelcome among the men and women who had always lived here. “As it is now.”

“It’s dusty,” Happy said. His paper mask was hanging by a thread around his neck. His face was darkened by the dirt, lighter around his mouth and darker across his forehead. It was smeared here and there where his hands must have wiped at it. “I expected to see more,” he paused, worked out what he meant to say, “us?” must have meant _Stark Industries_. 

Tony looked over her shoulder, down the streets that led to the massive crater, at the caution tape and the fences that kept men from getting too close. It seemed to her, that if Stark was involved in the disaster, they would have been involved with the crater. She shrugged, “as I understand it, he’s not too popular around here.”

“But if he can help—?”

That line of conversation wasn’t fit for the closeness of the line. Instead, she said, “how are you feeling? Good?”

“Tired. Exhausted.”

Tony smiled. The line lurched forward, she dragged the suitcase behind her. “Well, you can share my patch of floorboards as long as you don’t think it’s inappropriate.”

“Why would it be inappropriate?” Happy asked. He either didn’t care she was a woman (which was very different from her own) or it hadn’t occurred to him yet. 

“I am a married woman.”

That made him laugh, made the people around them turn to look at him, made his whole face go red, he was saying sorry until everyone looked away and when they were almost not being watched, he said, “ _you_ ’re married? I didn’t think that’s a thing that,” he motioned at her, “ _you_ did.” But also, “you’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

“Its on a necklace. I just wasn’t wearing it when,” she didn’t say _I was suddenly transported across universes_. “It’s on my dresser. But I am married.”

“Oh,” Happy said. “Would your—wi, hus— _spouse_ mind if we shared a floorboard? You said floorboard? We’re sleeping on a floorboard?”

Tony snorted. “No, I don’t think he’d mind given the circumstances.”

“On the floor,” Happy whined. He followed the line and thanked the volunteers for the food when it was handed to him. They carried it back to the house Tony was staying in, and Happy smiled sweetly for Anna until she agreed he could stay. They wheeled the suitcase to the little stretch of wall that Tony had claimed and they ate in relative quiet. When the rest of the house got quiet (as people fell asleep), Happy leaned back against the wall and said, “this is bad, boss.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed.

“I get the whole, be among the people, do good with hard work idea that you’re doing here but,” and a lot of emphasis was put on that _but_ , “as honorable and good as that may be, and as strong as you are, you could do more. At least that’s what Pepper said. Tony’s— _you_ ’re a genius. So it doesn’t have to be, you know, the full suit,” Happy was whispering to her now, “but I’m sure you could think of something. Because this,” he motioned at his filthy arms, at the piles of people sleeping in one house, at the charities passing out plastic bags of food, at the road that was still not cleared even after all this time, “sucks.”

“This isn’t my world,” Tony said. “I don’t belong here, I can’t do anything that could—backfire on him.”

“The world thinks he’s locked in Steve Rogers' basement,” Happy said. “You can’t make it worse.”

Tony sighed. “The basement?”

“Or a nervous breakdown.” (That one, at least, wasn’t too far off.) “All anyone knows for sure is someone saw Ir—him go to the compound and nobody has seen or heard from him since.”

Tony stared at the suitcase, at that little blinking light that was inviting her to get into all kinds of trouble, and then sideways at Happy who was slowly wilting into the corner. “You’re really his friend?”

“Mmhmm,” Happy agreed. 

“What would he do?”

Happy shrugged, “he wouldn’t be here,” was all mumbles, barely loud enough to be heard. “He would have, I don’t know, sent people. Put money into projects, hired people to build a power station or something. Maybe shown up in the middle of the night and cleared the road. I don’t know. He’s complicated.”

“But he wouldn’t have left it alone?”

Happy snorted, shifted so he was more horizontal than vertical. “Doesn’t sound like him, does it?” He was falling asleep faster than she could ask. There was no point in trying to keep him awake so she pulled the thin blanket over him. It was just here, sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs pulled up against her chest, looking at the blinking light on the suitcase. Thinking that she’d come here to put her strong back to work, that she hadn’t come here to be a savior but to get lost. (And thinking of Pepper, quietly packing the bag, and sending it along with Happy. Thinking of Pepper in the bathroom, looking her straight in the face, saying _nobody has to tell me to protect Tony_.)

# B SIDE

Steve hadn’t intended to start a fight but here he was shouting, “ _It wasn’t your place!_ ” Shouting was a funny practice; a strange sort of thing that always strove to be intimidating, to be impressive, to be scarier just by the virtue of volume but Steve had faced down plenty of villains that were just as threatening with a whisper as they were with a shout.

“My place?” Natasha repeated, “so I should have just let him keep drinking whatever he could find—he was _drunk_ in the—” 

“Yes!” Steve shouted. It came from the bottom of his gut, from so low in his body it didn’t even feel like it had come from him. There was a hole somewhere in him, a great black pit that had been ripped open. It could have been waking up to a stranger, or it could have been Wanda’s fingers in his head, or it could have just been his own ugly, dormant darkness. That same kind of thing that dragged Tony down on the bad days, that saw her in the lab looking over designs of things she’d never build, hugging her legs and hanging her head because the darkness had its own gravity. Things went down-and-down-and _down_ into that darkness but they never got back up. 

Natasha was shocked into silence. 

Bruce inched into the room from the side, palms out in surrender, trying to impose a sense of consequence on the scene. People didn’t argue in front of Bruce, folks didn’t raise their voice in front of Bruce. It was important to be calm, to talk softly, to tread lightly because Bruce was a man with a bomb in his chest. “I heard shouting,” was not an accusation.

“Steve thinks we should let Tony do whatever he chooses.” Natasha shifted her weight so her arms were crossed over her chest and she was leaning away from him. Every part of her, the voice, the stance, the look, seemed to indicate that Bruce was meant to agree with her. 

“Obviously, I didn’t say that,” Steve said.

“Only that we should let him get drunk wherever he wants. You know that Jarvis apparently can’t tell the difference between her and him, everything he does is on her record—and he can access _everything_ she can. There’s a reason she quit drinking.”

Yes, there was, but it wasn’t the reason that Natasha thought it was. It felt like, it seemed like, the reason that this Tony did drink was the same reason his wife did not. “I’m saying that you shouldn’t have pushed.”

“I didn’t push,” Natasha snapped back.

“More like shoved,” Bruce said innocently from the side.

“You pushed,” Natasha countered. “You agree with me, you think he shouldn’t be here.”

Steve dug his fingers into his hips, drew a breath in and held it. (It was something that Tony hated, that she said was immature, that when he got angry he just held his breath, like a toddler. It drove her crazy and no amount of convincing her that he was just taking a minute to think of how to respond had ever made a difference. She believed what she believed, and what annoyed her annoyed her and that was how it was.) 

“Tony wouldn’t want him—”

“Uh-oh,” Bruce whispered from the side.

“Tony’s not here,” Steve said. “And if she’s not here then _nobody_ knows what she would do and since none of us know what she _would_ do we are not going to _assume_ and we _aren’t_ going to do _shitty things_ to people and say it’s what she would have wanted!” (There it was again, that shout, the black thing in his gut creeping upward toward his throat.) 

“Guys,” Bruce said.

Natasha was clenching her jaw, staring at him with her stance matching his, looking like she was ready to go bare-knuckle brawl at any moment. They’d settled their difference with friendly matches in the ring more than once. But there was nothing friendly here. “This Tony doesn’t belong here,” Natasha said. Every word was an effort, every syllable striving for calm and barely managing it. “If I pushed too hard, or I pushed in the wrong way, it doesn’t change the fact that he can’t stay. We’re _bad_ for him. He looks at us like—” Natasha couldn’t think of anything, just let the half-finished sentence hang. “This isn’t a good place for him.”

“He’s _her_ , Nat. He _is_ Tony.”

“Not ours,” wasn’t angry. It was _hurt_. “I can’t help him, he doesn’t trust me.”

Bruce inched forward again, “he doesn’t trust any of us.”

Steve closed his eyes, rubbed his fingers against his forehead, and sighed. “Why would he?” There was no answer to that, he just shook his head, “I shouldn’t be here. I’m—” (Furious.) It didn’t matter, he looked at Natasha and she nodded. It was easy with her, because she understood the things there weren’t words for, because the delicate balance of apology and forgiveness was seamless with her. They shouted, they fought, they showed up to fight on the same side regardless. “I’ll tell you if we go back to Malibu.”

“Send a text,” Bruce suggested. He smiled when he said it, and Natasha smiled along.

# B SIDE

As it turned out, Tony did not enjoy bowling. The sport itself wasn’t necessarily not fun but the idea of wearing shoes that had been worn by countless unknown persons before him made his skin crawl. Happy had laughed at him for a solid five minutes, until tears were rolling down his face, and Tony had stayed only to shut him up. 

Hours later, they were walking up a road that looked almost familiar, Tony had a bag of cooled down Burger King under one arm and Happy was slurping soda from a mostly empty cup. They had talked about every sort of sports Happy knew anything about, about the state of modern politics (Happy knew more than Tony would have given him credit for) and had meandered to a sort of halting point of love. “I’m just assuming that you’re the same as she is, that you’re just—” Happy stopped (again) and slurped his soda, “that women gravitate toward you naturally.” (Look at the man sparing his feelings.) “I’ve never been that good looking.”

“You’re a beautiful man,” Tony said.

Happy snorted. “I’m not.” But that didn’t seem to slow him down. “I just don’t know how to—I mean, this is, we shouldn’t. You’re dating Pepper right? This is inappropriate. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey,” Tony said. He put his hand on Happy’s arm to stop his forward motion and turn him, so they were looking at one another. “My Pepper is not your Pepper. Although,” and this was the important part, “sadly I can’t give you any advice on how to make a move on her. She made all the moves.” That wasn’t completely right. “Most of the moves. I have moves.”

“Yeah. Of course. You have a lot of moves.” Happy said. He didn’t drag his feet but kick at the pebbles on the sidewalk. He shrugged it off though. “Were you going to see Steve?”

“No,” Tony said. “Why?”

Happy had a naturally guilty face; regardless of the crime, he probably had done it. The fact that he always looked as if he were the one that took the last bagel meant it was impossible to know if he had actually, in fact, taken the last bagel. Just then, he glanced sideways toward the set of steps they had stopped in front of and lifted his elbow enough to point in its direction as he said, “because this is his apartment. And,” Happy pulled the bag of cheeseburgers he’d been carrying since the Burger King (about twenty minutes back now) out from under his arm to lift it up and shake it, “there’s still like ten of these left.”

“That’s like a snack for this guy,” Tony pointed his thumb at the steps. “And I was going to eat those.”

“You?”

“Yes, I was going to eat those, give me the bag. Happy, _Happy_ , give me the—” 

This was how he was found, with his hand reaching up into the air to grab the bag of cheeseburgers out of Happy’s upturned hand, him on his toes, Happy smirking to himself at what an advantage he had. Tony was forty-five (a sophisticated age), a genius, a billionaire and in general not the sort of guy who would get into a kindergarten scuffle with his friend over some food, but at that moment, when Steve stepped out of the front door of the apartment building, Tony was nothing but the guy grabbing Happy by the shirt to keep him from moving so he could get the bag.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Tony said.

Steve’s hands were in his jean pockets. His expression was fluidly changing from fond to amused and lingered definitely on the side of a smirk forming on his face. “Looks like it might be,” he said. 

Tony dropped down flat on his feet and straightened his own shirt. He’d lost his bag of burgers in the process of trying to get the second one and his bag of clothes was hanging off his neck rather than his shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not.”

Happy threw the bag up at Steve who pulled his hands out of his pockets with extreme leisure and caught it just before it landed on the steps. “Tony brought you a snack,” he said.

“You set me up,” Tony said, very quietly, just loudly enough that Happy could hear him and hear that he wasn’t happy about how this turned out. 

Happy had no concept of a secret voice, so he used his body to create a quiet space between them where he could talk at normal volume. “I followed you. You came here, I just carried your bag.” He glanced sideways at Steve and then back at Tony. “It’s not my place, but— Give him a chance.” Then Happy patted him on the shoulder and walked away, as if he hadn’t committed high fraud, betrayal and treason all in one. As if he were right, as if Tony had been the one to turn this direction, to bring them here—as if—

“You don’t have to stay,” Steve said. He had done an excellent job pretending he wasn’t listening but it was hard to pretend you didn’t hear something when you were widely known to be perfect. “I can get you a car, a hotel—whatever you need.”

Tony didn’t like the height difference between them, how he had to crane his neck to look up three steps to Captain Perfect. He didn’t like the thought of hotel rooms, or the tower, or people with familiar faces that didn’t act like he expected. He didn’t like this _place_ or the quiet that was festering as Steve looked at him. 

“I’m sorry, Tony. I didn’t realize that— I thought Pepper—” Steve hung his head, and after a moment he looked up again. “I messed up,” summed up everything, apparently. “And they,” his hand lifted, presumably in the direction of the Avengers’ tower, “messed up. When I look at you—I know you’re not her, I know _that_ , but you’re Tony and I think you’ll behave like her. That’s not fair. So, we can stay here or go to Malibu, or somewhere else. Not that you have to stay with me--”

God damn this stupid man, looking at him with that kind of sincerity, like he hadn’t slept in days, like he was missing part of his fucking body, like this was his last chance and he was trying so hard. Tony’s hand caught the strap of the bag across his chest and he shrugged. “Malibu is nice this time of year.”

“It is,” Steve said cautiously.

“I’m not good at this,” Tony said from the bottom of the steps. He could feel himself shrugging, “we don’t—you and I, we don’t really _talk_.”

“I can be quiet.” It was spoken with such complete honesty that it was almost heartbreaking. 

Tony smiled (like a reflex, like he did any time he didn’t know how else to respond), “I think that’d be a step backward, Cap. So,” he moved to stand on the bottom step, “I’ll do my best to remember you’re not my Steve, you remind everyone I’m not your Tony.”

There was pink on his cheeks, an aw-shucks school boy shame to the way he smiled, “I think they know now.” But, he wasn’t going to elaborate about whatever he’d shouted at the people in the tower. (No, of course not, that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.) “I’m glad you came back,” Steve said.

Tony smiled. He thought he should have said something like, _of course you are_ , or maybe, _stop trying so hard_ , but he stood there, like an idiot, smiling and the only thing that he could get out of his mouth was, “are you kidding, your shower has the best water pressure in the city.”

“Thanks,” was Steve, not quite sure what to say, pulling the door open for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, I am sorry that this is late. I'm making no promises regarding delivering the next chapter on time (since next Sunday is Christmas Eve and all). But I hope to resume normal posting after the new year. Thank you for your patience, and reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back.

# A SIDE

There was blood on her hands, dripping off the curls of her fingers and landing in her lap, glistening in the light of the flashlight she had clenched between her teeth. The dirty, ripped flesh dragging repeatedly against the screwdriver she was clutching in her slick grip. Wires were puddled pink at her side, delicate laid across crinkly paper that she’d taken from the bags that Happy brought her.

Tony thought, maybe, she heard an echo of a different time and a different place. A sort of phantom of a man who just couldn’t help but rest his hands on his hips and hang his head when he walked face-first into a great display of hysteria. (And well, to Steve Rogers, a great deal of things looked like hysteria. Sanity was tricky like that, always looking like insanity to men who lacked empathy.) But that wasn’t fair because Steve didn’t lack empathy, he lacked imagination. Black was black and white was white.

Right now, (phantom) Steve Rogers was looking over her shoulder, at the blood soaking into her jeans sighing out something like, _does it have to be like this_. 

The thing was, the _thing_ was that she didn’t _know_ anymore if it had to be. She had lost her grip on the difference between real necessity and the _feeling_ of necessity. “I think so,” was mumbled around the flashlight. “You see the news today?” (This was her, on her ass on the damp ground, with blood on her hands, sorting through things that were kind of her property, talking to herself to hold off the blooming sense of panic that was spreading through her chest.) “I didn’t realize it was that fucking hard,” the flashlight fell out of her mouth and she clenched her teeth rather than scream. Her foot kicked the dirt and she closed her eyes a moment, “to say: _It wasn’t Tony Stark_. How is that difficult, I can do it. I can say it five times fast, I can say it in three languages, I could build a fucking robot with his face and put it on the news.”

The Steve that wasn’t there, the one that had slowly, but surely, become known as _her_ Steve shrugged with his hands on his hips and his head hanging low. He was caught in a paradoxical despair because he didn’t agree with the words she was saying, and it didn’t matter as much as the fact that she was _hurt_.

They got themselves into that trap sometimes, fighting about what they were fighting about. 

Tony opened her eyes and picked the flashlight up from where it had fallen. It tasted like fresh dirt and blood when she clenched her teeth around it again. 

(Imaginary) Steve crouched at her back, hands reaching out but not touching, and he said, _does it have to be this way_ or maybe he said _you have nothing to prove here_ because the world was a simple place when you’d already proven everything you set out to prove. 

And what must that have been like? For a skinny boy from Brooklyn begging for a chance to die in a war, to wake up in a different time and a different place where he was hailed as a hero. Captain fucking America was a six-foot blond with blue eyes and patriotism for days, the kind of guy that every woman wanted to sink her fingers into, the sort of man that men thought they wanted to be. (And most men, they defined Captain America by the circumference of his biceps and didn’t care much at all for the heart.) The good Captain could shoot the President in the face on national TV, and just as soon as the shock of graphic content passed, every man and every woman who considered themselves good Americans would believe their elected President was a traitor. (But he _wouldn’t_ , and that’s what every good old-fashioned American knew. Captain America was an ideal bigger than a single man; incorruptible good.)

Except their incorruptible good was an angry little boy hiding out in a custom-made clubhouse, collecting the good will of people who didn’t know any better.

“Sir,” Friday chirped from the phone in the bag at Tony’s side. “Diagnostics on the Mark 42 are complete. All systems are operational, a flight path has been determined.”

“Thanks,” she said around the flashlight in her mouth. “What time is it?”

“Three-oh-six AM, sir.”

Tony dropped the screwdriver into the pile of salvaged bits and threw the rest back into the pit with the other parts. The crinkly paper stuck to her bleeding hands when she rolled it up and shoved it into her bag. She got back to her feet tucked the screwdriver into her back pocket. “We should sleep,” she said. (If they could.)

# B SIDE

The noise was coming from the kitchen, a gentle scratching of plate on table or cup against counter. There was no light until Tony flipped the switch near the doorway, and he almost wished he hadn’t as soon as he did it. 

Steve (his, at least) did not display a great range of feelings. Sometimes he managed exhaustion when the battle went on-and-on and the aftermath was a great lull of noise and motion. Sometimes, Steve managed to look inconvenienced by pain. It was just that, no matter how Tony searched through his memory, could he name any time he had seen the man look like this:

Holding a bottle of whiskey balanced against his thigh with a tumbler lifted to his lips, his hair in peaks and swirls from a failed attempt to sleep, his face with fading pink marks and his eyes hollowed out so there was nothing but dull darkness in them. Steve’s knuckles were recovering pressure marks and his whole body was a slant of hopeless aggression. There was no anger in, just the despair that came with the realization that there was _nothing_ that could be done about it. “Want a drink?” Steve asked.

“I didn’t think you approved.”

Steve looked over at him with a sigh. “I met her after she gave up drinking. She wasn’t,” he pulled open the cabinet door and took out a second glass, set it down with more force than was warranted, “exactly succeeding at it when we met but she was trying,” he tipped the bottle to fill the cup, “I think she said it was what she imagined hell would feel like, always craving something she didn’t want to want,” he dropped the bottle on the counter and picked up the glass to hold it out toward Tony.

“Sounds familiar,” he agreed.

“I can’t get drunk,” Steve said when Tony took the glass. “I want to,” was an admission that felt too naked, too raw, to be shared among strangers like they were. “People did a story about her, they said she _beat_ the alcoholism. Everyone thought it was a great piece, that it brought awareness to a problem that is used in film and TV but isn’t genuinely addressed. They thought it was good that we acknowledged women can suffer from alcoholism too—but she hated it. She said there was no beating it; that some choices haunt you until you die. The only way to beat the liquor,” he raised the bottle again, “would be to build a time machine and stop herself from ever drinking it to start.”

There was a tremor in his hand, a sort of pain that pinched in odd places on his fingers. Tony set the glass on the table without taking a drink of it. “I don’t consider myself an alcoholic,” he said. 

Steve snorted, “I don’t consider myself a war-monger,” he swallowed the rest of the liquor in the glass without so much as a grimace, “but I just can’t walk past a fight.” He set the glass on the counter behind him, “sometimes we can’t see things about ourselves.”

“What prompted the,” Tony motioned at Steve, the bottle, the ugly fog of discontent around him. He was thinking _pity party_ but he didn’t want to _say_ it. (Wasn’t that funny, missing an opportunity to poke Steve Rogers in a soft spot.) 

Steve closed his eyes, let his shoulders sag and if you looked very closely at his face you could see the pink around his eyes, see it blossom around the tip of his nose before it faded. There was an excess of dampness in his eyes, but it didn’t overflow, it just glistened to give life back to the deadness of his eyes. “We could have said it was cancer,” he said, “but we chose a miscarriage. That’s what we said she’s doing, she’s recovering from a miscarriage. We talked about having a baby—or trying—there’s increased risk the older you are, and considering her high risk lifestyle—but she said, _we wouldn’t even adopt a dog_ because I didn’t want an animal we wouldn’t be around to take care of.” He shrugged, like anything he was mumbling made sense. “She _hates_ the pregnancy rumors, she _hates_ them. And we said miscarriage.”

There was no room for his opinion in this monologue, no space leftover for him to offer anything because it had nothing at all to do with him. He wasn’t Steve’s wife, and he wasn’t the Tony that hated rumors, and wasn’t the Tony that was missing (not from this world), but there he was saying, “I think she’d forgive you, Cap.”

Steve laughed then, like a man who couldn’t bring himself to cry, he laughed as his hand tightened around the neck of his liquor bottle and his body jolted from shock. It caught him in the gut and it tore through his whole body and he was shaking his head and screwing the cap back on the liquor. “Maybe,” he said after a beat, “but, I didn’t do what I promised. I didn’t protect her.” He shrugged again. “Maybe that’s one of those things you can’t see about yourself, where you’re going to fail. How much it’ll hurt.”

“You’re going to get her back,” Tony said. That was a funny thing to say; because he hadn’t been thinking about it at all. He hadn’t even been pretending to think about how to get back— (And not, necessarily, because there was no obvious signs as to how the switch had happened. Because he’d gotten caught up in himself, in this world, in the differences that made his whole body hurt.) –now here they were, Steve looking at him like he was going to have to pretend to believe him and Tony gritting his teeth together with a smile crossing his face. “That’s what they all say, isn’t it? She’ll figure it out, she always does. We’re not, exactly, the same person but we can figure it out, her and me.”

“She’s not looking for a way back,” Steve said.

No. She wasn’t. Now it was said, it was almost a relief, almost like letting out a breath you held too long. “I’ll start,” Tony said. 

There it was, the classic Steve Rogers’ face of believing that you believed something he found unbelievable. “You don’t have—”

“Cap—” because he could _not_ bear to hear about how he didn’t have to pretend or care or try one more fucking time. 

“Make me feel better,” wasn’t the ending he saw coming. 

“I want to,” surprised them both. “For her,” got tacked on too quickly. He nodded his head, and rubbed his palms together. The moment stretched and stretched until it reached a point of suffocation, Steve looking at him with something like hope and Tony trying to figure out how to get out without being discovered. “You got a TV? We could watch something since we’re not sleeping.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “It’s 2015, of course I’ve got a TV.”

# A SIDE

The morning, the proper morning, the after you’ve-had-some-sleep, the sun-is-up morning started with Happy’s hand gently shaking her by the shoulder, his rounded face looking confused as he balanced his weight on his knees and he asked, “what does that mean?”

“What?” Her watch (a very cleverly disguised bit of Stark tech) said it was only eight-oh-six in the morning. “What does what mean?” She lifted her hand to rub her face, forgetting that she had cuts and scabs and scrapes all over them, forgetting that Happy had brought her gloves to protect her very important hands. 

“We have to find a way to sharpen the blades,” Happy repeated but he tacked on, “what happened to your hands?” It wasn’t the voice of a bodyguard or a best friend, but an aging mother hen clucking in despair over her disobedient little chicks. He didn’t touch her but hover like he wanted to grab her by the fingertips and demand she explain herself. That must have been before he saw the blood on her shirt and her jeans and dried on her wrists where it had dripped while she was working. 

“The axes,” was easier to answer. Trying to explain anger to the people that lived in this world seemed like it would be a waste of time. She pushed herself up, so she was leaning back against the wall and cleared her throat, “breakfast?”

“We have to clean these.”

That had ended with them standing in line at the medical tents for an hour and a half, just long enough for Tony to start developing fantasies of an endless line of cups of coffee, all steaming and hot and ready for her. She was daydreaming about bacon and toast and Steve wearing nothing but his jeans while he made breakfast, clutching her depressing tasteless water bottle and her little plastic bag of what passed for breakfast in this desolate little hellhole. 

(Every part of her wanted to ask the pink-faced volunteer handing out the sacks what they’d had to eat for breakfast that morning.)

“Well,” was the final verdict from a very skinny doctor with an undiscernible accent, faded scrubs and a white mask hanging at her neck instead of covering her mouth, “you don’t need stitches. Just as well, we couldn’t do them here anyway.” She clutched all her pockets, found nothing but lint and scraps of paper before rummaging through the plastic boxes they had stacked up on tables behind them. “How did you do this?”

“I’m helping to clear the road,” Tony said. (Happy crossed his arms over his chest and pouted, as grown men were wont to do when they didn’t get a chance to answer questions.) 

“Not today.” It was a statement of fact; leaving no room for Tony to provide a more adequate excuse. But then the sour look on this woman’s face did not seem to be concerned with seeking excuses. “Nobody is clearing the road today.” She pointed a bit of gauze back toward the line they had been standing in. “Did you not see the crowd? It only happens when the vultures come for the scraps.”

“Vultures?” Tony asked. Not because she needed to know but because idle conversation was better than focusing on how mercilessly her hands were being scrubbed clean at the moment.

“The Americans,” the doctor said, “the ones that come for the scraps.”

Tony looked at Happy who was doing an Oscar worthy imitation of a man who cared very deeply about his fingernails. That was fine because here she was doing her damn best not to have a noticeable opinion about anything. Rather than ask anything else she just accepted the scolding for letting her hands go so long without being properly cleaned.

“You don’t want to lose these hands,” the doctor told her, “do not be stupid,” and then she sent them on their way.

Out again, on the clogged road of helpful volunteers and miserable, hopeless families attempting to flee the destroyed city (still waiting, it seemed, for the traffic to clear), Tony drew a breath in and let it out again. “Did you know?”

“I know it’s what usually happens,” Happy said. “He doesn’t like to leave bits laying around for anyone who takes an interest to see what they can make of the scraps. He says that’s reckless. He says it’s too dangerous.”

The uncleared road, when they reached it, had been blocked off by official looking men baring permits that gave them sole authority to remove hazardous debris from the hole the survivors had spent their time filling. They wore suits and gloves and hats that (miraculously) did not declare them employees of Stark Industries but that small omission didn’t make one bit of difference. She stood just outside the crowd of the people who could not work to clear the road, she listened to them grumble under their breath about the uselessness of rich-and-powerful men. 

“There’s so many of them,” Tony said. “Why aren’t they clearing the road?”

“They aren’t allowed to.” Happy had the good grace to feign frustration when he said it, but it was, it seemed, business-as-usual. There was no anger in his body, none in his voice, none in his face. “I heard,” his mouth formed the word Pepper but his voice didn’t let it out, he said, “her talking about it. They had to haggle just to get the permit that allows them to collect the,” he motioned at the bits of tech being extracted from the pit. 

“If they want it that bad, maybe they should do the work of clearing the fucking road,” Tony snapped. She was going to elbow her way to the front of the line but Happy’s hand caught her by the upper arm. 

“Whoa,” was his hands putting themselves up in surrender just in time to keep himself from getting punched. There was red staining the white bandages on her hands (already) as she clenched her fists. “They _can’t_ , okay? Its not that we don’t want to, it’s that we _can’t_. That’s politics, okay? That’s just how it works.”

(But she knew that; she knew it better than most. She ran an international vigilante response group and she did it with the implicit approval of every government that benefited from their actions. Between her and the staff—all those leftover bits of SHIELD—they had working relationship with half the god damn world. No, this wasn’t her forte, this wasn’t where she operated, in the dirt of a foreign country watching with helpless outrage at the utter waste. 

No. This was what Steve did.)

“No wonder they hate us,” she whispered. Happy just sighed at her back.

# B SIDE

“So,” Happy said at the terminal, looking out the big-glass-windows at Stark’s private jet. It had all the earmarks of overstated luxury but all the plush, oversized seating in the world wouldn’t have made the trip from New York to Malibu anymore pleasant for any of them. “Pepper’s angry.”

Steve nodded. It was his fault she was there at all. It was his fault the news broke late-last-night, through anonymous sources speaking anonymously, that Tony Stark had suffered a traumatic, life-threatening miscarriage and an official statement was due to make the rounds today asking for understanding and privacy in these difficult times. “I’ll say something to her,” he said.

“Probably not a great idea, Cap.” Happy was easy to underestimate, easy to forget to consider, but standing there a few feet to the left, looking out the window with all the anticipation of a man walking into his own gruesome murder scene, he understood more about what they were about to endure than anyone in this world. Happy had known Pepper for _years_ ; long before there was Steve, it had been Happy, and Pepper, and _Rhodey_. “I don’t think she knows why she’s angry yet.”

Steve sighed.

“I have this feeling,” Happy said. He tapped his hand against his chest, “right here. It hurts. I just woke up with it a few days ago— I don’t know _why_ , but it feels like she needs me. I don’t even know where she is, so I guess I’ve got to,” he looked sideways at Tony slouching into one of the uncomfortable lounge chairs, half lost in a jacket he borrowed from Steve, with his bag at his feet. “I don’t know. Do whatever I can.”

“It’s the whatever I haven’t worked out yet,” Steve said. He didn’t have to look at Tony to know he was staring out the window, to see the sleeplessness that made his eyes dark, because he’d spent the night watching bullshit TV with him, watching him do his best. It was _exhausting_ in its own way, to watch Tony doing his best. (His best impression of what he thought Steve needed, his best to appear healthy and happy and whole, his best at breathing.) “I keep thinking, wherever she is, she’s angry. She has to be angry— When Tony’s angry?”

(Things had a tendency of being irrevocably altered in the wake of Tony’s anger. It was like a great wave and it consumed everything it touched.)

“The one good thing,” Happy countered as if there was anything good to come of this conversation, “to come out of you marrying her is how it’s really focused her anger. Wherever she is, the only person that’s got to worry is you.”

“Thank you Happy,” wasn’t sincere, “that makes me feel better.”

Happy slapped him on the back. “Good. I mean—if it has to be anyone? You’re pretty good at taking a punch. And, between us, just from what I’ve heard,” (he stage whispered behind his cupped hand), “this other you sounds like a dick.”

Steve snorted. “But handsome.”

Happy shrugged, dragged a noise of consideration out long enough the joke was made and they were both smiling at it (and the questionable nature of Steve’s good looks) when Pepper walked up to them. The sound of her heels made Happy’s whole posture change and his pink-and-amused face went placid and serious just before she stopped at his side. With one hand on the long handle of her rolling suitcase and the other gripped around the spine of a tablet cover, she looked as if she was already tired of them.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

“Just waiting to be boarded,” Happy assured her.

Pepper looked over her shoulder at where Tony was sitting and sighed out through her nose, “how did you get him here?”

“He said he wanted to go,” Steve said.

Pepper hummed at that and then cleared her throat. “Well. It seems I wasn’t helpful at all.” Then she left to speak to the airport staff about getting on their plane. She was always smiling, always saying _please_ and _thank you_ with exactly the right sort of tone that conveyed she wasn’t asking and she would be obeyed. 

“So angry,” Happy whispered. 

“Yes, she is,” Steve agreed. He had made it a habit, after trial and error, to not make guesses about why the women that populated his life were angry. It was half the distance of his childhood seventy-some-odd-years ago, a set of memories comprised of a different time and a different outlook and half the simple fact that no matter how close his guess, it was never wanted. Pepper was angry and when she was ready she would tell him why or she wouldn’t. 

Tony looked up from doing a great job of not paying attention to look at Pepper, and just for a second, if that long, the look that overcame his face was enough to stab Steve in the chest. He knew that feeling, that terrible longing for things that were gone, and the confusing, breath-stealing, hurtful feeling of looking at someone that was-and-was _not_ the person you remembered they were.

“Right here,” Happy said again with his fingers tapping at his chest. “It hurts me right here.”

This was the part when Steve was supposed to promise that things would improve, that everything would turn out, that they would all be happy again. This was the exact moment that he was meant to say but the only words that he could think to offer was the nod of his head. He felt it too, just right there. “Come on,” he said, “I think the plane’s ready.”

# A SIDE

It was not, as far as Steve was concerned, an ideal place to stage a meeting, but he knew very little about clandestine meetings to start with. Still, it didn’t feel private, or neutral when he found himself sitting in a corner booth at a local restaurant, looking over the top of the lunch menu while Pepper finished thanking the hostess that sat them.

Rhodey was wearing casual clothes like they were an official uniform, trying for and failing to maintain an air of civility. Even the seating seemed strategic. At least, from an outside of point of view, it must have seemed strategic. Very much the same way all those men that entered the elevator must have felt it was _strategic_. It was all arrogance gained from experience, but he was bold enough to think that nothing good had ever come from putting Steve in a corner. (But here he was, nonetheless, neatly sandwiched in a corner with Rhodey at one exit and Pepper at the other.) “They have good salads,” Rhodey said.

Pepper nodded.

It wasn’t the company that made it feel ridiculous but the _pretense_. Without the implied necessity of making a formality of trading information, they could have done this in a parking lot. They could have done this over the phone. Yet, here they were.

“Rhodey said you had information,” Steve said.

Pepper’s hands were resting on the table, folded lightly one over the other. Her smile was plastic, her back straight as a rod. (Wasn’t that fantastic? Wasn’t it a miracle, to see the loyalty that Tony had wrung out of his friends.) “I promised that I would update you if there was any unusual activity.” 

“And?” Steve prompted.

“Last night,” Pepper said, her fingers curled into the menu, her fingernails caught on one stiff sheet of it as she searched for the precise phrasing she wanted to use, “a full flight diagnostic was run.”

“That’s not unusual activity,” Rhodey countered, “the suits are programmed to run self-diagnostics. The War Machine does the same thing.”

Steve snorted, he looked at the menu laying across the tablecloth and let his eyes close for a minute. (It made sense then, why they had asked him for a public meeting, on neutral territory. It made sense why they had put an empty chair between Pepper and him. Everything made sense to him, a perfectly surreal kind of sense. They were afraid of him, maybe not entirely, but just enough to warrant _precautions_.) “It wasn’t a routine diagnostic.”

“No,” Pepper agreed. “It has mapped a full flight plan and it has activated stand-by mode. It is,” she seemed reluctant to say, “just waiting.”

Steve nodded and Rhodey sat back in his chair with one hand on his lap and one fist half curled on the table top. He was searching through a cycle of excuses, looking for something that would explain what he was hearing. There was Pepper staring at him, waiting for him to find one that _convinced_ her it was true. 

“I sent Happy,” Pepper said. “He didn’t report anything back to me that would indicate there’s any intention to—”

“What is she doing there?” Steve asked.

“Helping to clear a road to allow the remainder of the trapped civilians to escape,” Pepper said. She smiled at the waiter when he arrived and assured him with absolute sincerity that they would need a few more minutes before they were ready to order. 

“Then she must be thinking about—” Rhodey started. 

“She cannot be seen using it,” Pepper cut in. That was absolute. “No photographs, no videos, no eye witness reports. Tony isn’t here. Without him, there is nobody to,” and she stopped there. Her hands relaxed again. 

“We can’t assume the worst.”

“I’m not assuming the worst, I’m assuming the most likely—and I heard, is it true, I heard that Wanda and Vision are going to Sokovia to help? They’re going to be in the same city? That woman tried to kill Tony.” That was _anger_ as raw and real as Steve had ever seen it, the sort of unchecked anger that came when you only found out the whole truth too late to help. 

Rhodey’s jaw clenched and loosened but he didn’t waste any breath trying to tell Pepper that everything would be okay. Instead he looked at Steve, like he was expecting something he’d already decided he wasn’t going to get. 

“Wanda went home to help the people of Sokovia,” Steve said. He could almost feel Rhodey rolling his eyes. He did glance at the man, who was still just waiting for nothing, “and unless someone told _her_ there’s no reason that she would even know that Wanda was going to Sokovia. It wouldn’t have been the reason that she ran the diagnostic.”

“There is _no_ reason,” Rhodey said. (Steve agreed, there was no reason to even have taken the Iron Man armor at all, but that’s what Tony had done. She’d built it and she packed it and she took it across the ocean just-in-case she needed it. That was the tricky thing about having weapons within reaching distance _just in case_ because sooner or later you always found that just-in-case came to be just-this-once and that became it-was-necessary faster and faster every time.) “Except as a routine test.”

“You have the file,” Steve said. “Is it programmed to run a flight diagnostic on its own?”

“No, but Tony’s note said the propulsion system was buggy he was going to—”

Pepper looked down at the menu under hands, and the table fell quiet. 

“Can you turn it off from here?” Steve asked.

“I can’t turn it off at all,” Pepper said. The strange thing was how her smile didn’t falter at all, not even for a moment. She looked at him without flinching when she said, “my interest is in protecting Tony, I will authorize anything you need if you will help me protect him.”

“Pepper,” Rhodey said.

“Tony trusts him,” she said across the table, “he gave him the Avengers, didn’t he? He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t trust that Steve Rogers would do the right thing.” 

And that meant, at that moment, all that was left to be determined was what Steve Rogers thought was the right thing to do. Rhodey wasn’t going to be the one that told her, how he’d already figured out (what he thought he knew) about what priority Steve put on protecting Tony. No, Rhodey was going to keep his mouth shut so tight the muscle in his jaw was dancing. Rhodey wasn’t going to fight Pepper face-to-face, not with words or ideals or anything.

“If I go there,” Steve said, “it will be a fight. The only thing we do know for certain about her is that she doesn’t like me.”

“I know,” Pepper said, “that’s not what I want. At this point, I need to think about protecting _his_ name, and _his_ property more than I need to concern myself with her feelings.” But those words, as brave as they were, scraped out of Pepper’s throat. They didn’t come easy and they weren’t without injury. All the same, they were said and heard.

“I’ll show you what I found on the schematics,” Rhodey said. “I don’t like it. But if it becomes necessary, it would be better to disable the suit as quickly as possible with as little injury to the pilot as possible.”

“Were you ready to order?” the waiter asked. 

Pepper picked up her menu without missing a beat, as if she had spent this whole time deciding what she meant to eat (as if she could eat, right now) and Rhodey did the same thing. It was only Steve, unclenching his hand from the edge of the menu he’d been holding, looking at where his fingers had left it misshapen, that had no idea at all what they even offered for lunch. He ordered the first thing right off the top (something with chicken) and apologized for the menu when he handed it over.

“Thank you,” Pepper said, without any irony, without any sarcasm. 

Steve could only nod, and see how Rhodey frowned out of the corner of his eye. The rest of lunch was an exchange of pleasantries and bland small talk—the weather, sports, politics and good byes.

# B SIDE

Malibu was, removed of all the circumstances, truly beautiful. A man could stand by the pool, with his hands resting on the rails separating him from an almost certainly lethal fall, and simply forget. 

It was easy to forget when half the things he had to remember were ugly. (Like the sound his house made when it was hit by missiles, the sound of the structure cracking, the deep, unforgiving darkness of the water it had fallen into.) Maybe he’d had some idea of the sort of things he’d need to forget when he was a young man, full of cocky, youthful arrogance, when he’d stood on this cliff and he’d made his plans to build a house that couldn’t be built.

Or maybe it was assigning too much significance to impulse, too much forethought to what amounted to an act of petty spite.

It was nice to think some part of him had felt that _something_ was coming. Some hindbrain part of that paid attention to the clues that, in hindsight, seemed so obvious it was a miracle he’d managed to be surprised. (Wasn’t that the hell of it, waking up alive after he’d talked Pepper through the steps of killing Obadiah, thinking that it should have been _obvious_ that the man hated him?) 

But feelings were funny things, like this unsettled sensation that was filling up his chest like bright-hot-lava. It filled in all the empty spaces between his ribs, it pooled in the center of his chest where the arc reactor was _not_ anymore. It was only a certain amount of time until it drown him and it wasn’t (was _not_ ) coming from _him_. It was an echo, a borrowed feeling, an implied sensation of despair.

Tony had said, _I’ll start_ , and that was funny because he hadn’t known _then_ exactly what he meant. He still didn’t _know_ because knowing was putting your hands on concrete fact, but he had an _idea_ about a _feeling_ that wasn’t growing out of his gut, but he could feel it all the same. 

That anger, as hot as lava, and that despair (as sharp as broken glass) was _her_ ; the woman this picture-perfect world was aching for. Over there, in his sloppy, ugly world, she was six-steps from cracking apart at the joints.

A door opened behind him, and closed again, and a quiet shuffle of feet brought Happy just close enough to see out of his peripheral vision. One of his hands rested on the rail, he squinted out at the sun glittering on the water.

“I thought you were going home,” Tony said.

Happy shrugged, “I am. I just,” his hand lifted, waved in the air useless, trying and failing to convey a feeling that couldn’t be put into words.

“Happy,” he said. He turned just enough to look at the man, enough that one of his hands slid off the rail and hung at his side. “She’s angry.”

“Yeah,” Happy agreed.

There they were discussing hypotheticals like fact, both of them sharing a sensation that shouldn’t exist. Like this house shouldn’t exist, like Tony shouldn’t exist _here_. Accepted as fact, it was the first clue they’d found that might bring them closer to figuring out how this happened. 

“She’s sad too,” Happy added. He shrugged that off, as if it were insignificant, as if this sort of hungry sadness in Tony’s gut was so easy to brush off. “Not that she’d admit it. Tony’s always angry, she knows how to be angry. She doesn’t know how to be sad.”

Tony looked back out at the water. “Maybe you should stay tonight.” 

Happy nodded, didn’t speak, just looked out at the water. They took up space like that, letting the echoes of another world crackle in their chests. When it felt like the tide would drag them down, Happy snorted to himself, he said, “your Steve never met her,” as if he’d only just stumbled upon that, and his face flushed with amusement that made his eyes sparkle, “no I mean, he met _you_ , but he never met her before? It took her six weeks to get him to hit her back when they sparred. He won’t hit a woman,” Happy said.

“And?”

Happy’s smile slipped, fell flat, “I guess it’s not _funny_.”

“What, Happy? What’s not funny?”

“She’s sad because she’s alone,” Happy explained, “she’s alone because he’s not there. Tony can’t—she doesn’t know how to be sad, she only knows how to be angry, and she when she’s angry she—”

Tony nodded before Happy could finish that thought, before he could say it outright, how this woman taking up his place in his world was going to find a way (come hell or high water) to vent her feelings on the man with the face of her husband. The thought wasn’t _funny_ but it tickled him in a way, just about where he kept all his spite and all his meanness. Right about where the memory of Steve’s sour-and-disapproving face looking at him in the wake of Ultron’s unfortunate birth was kept. And he did smile then, “he’ll be fine,” Tony said, “Steve knows how to take a punch.”

Happy nodded at that. “He probably deserves one.” And his smile came back, all secret and mean-spirited.

# A SIDE

Between the so-called neutral territory of a terrible lunch date and the assured security of the Avenger’s compound, Steve had simply run out of energy. He had found a quiet table outside a coffee shop that served crumbly scones and strong brew; he had ordered both and left them sitting on the table while his indecisive fingers turned a quarter over and over again.

(His mother called it fidgeting and she scolded him for it. So maybe he’d learned how to sit completely still, or maybe he’d lost the habit the way he’d lost his parents.)

The thing about Tony Stark, the most important thing, the _only_ thing that anyone seemed to care about (anymore) was the gravitational pull of his charming smile. Even Steve, who was least likely of anyone, could admit that there were few things more likely to talk him right out of his intentions than Tony Stark with a smile on his face. (In a very, very small way it reminded him of Bucky who had a sweet smile and a wandering heart, who had wandered right into and right out of love with Steve. Because Bucky was dangerous with a smile on his face, always playing the part of a white knight riding into rescue damsels and skinny grown men who couldn’t defend themselves regardless of how hard they tried. Tony was like, immensely likeable, with unknowable morals and changeable intentions.) It didn’t matter to the (admittedly limited) people that loved Tony what he did, or what he could still do—of the danger caught in his charming smile or the devastation that his amazing intelligence was capable of—no. The people that loved Tony loved him unconditionally.

Not blindly, though. That was an important distinction that Steve hadn’t seen before. Pepper did not love Tony blindly; she loved him by choice. That choice was not without drawbacks or pain, or sacrifice. That choice was not without effort.

Here he was again, thinking that he was a ninety-year-old virgin hanging onto ideals of love he’d never truly managed to believe. Here he was thinking, he was better off alone, better off with nothing to hold him back. Here he was, seventy years after he convinced himself he was making a noble, necessary sacrifice, sitting by himself thinking about a long flight back to his most recent battlefield. 

Love must have been that ugly thing that left him breathless and willing to die, staring the Winter Soldier in the face, thinking he was willing to take any consequence just for the chance to see recognition in his friend’s face one-more-time. Love must have been the selfish secret he kept. It was a choice, the way Pepper had made a choice, to love Bucky unconditionally. To love his wandering heart, to love his dangerous smile, to love him regardless of the lives he had taken. But his love was blind, and stupid, keeping secrets that weren’t his to keep; lying by saying nothing, and letting his whole gut fill up with acid every single time he saw Tony’s charming smile. 

Steve was Captain America, the noble and brave, the greatest and best soldier in history—the face on the trading card, the ideal that men strived for, and just beneath that mask he was just an idiot that lied on exactly the right enlistment form.

There wasn’t much space between fact and fiction in Steve’s life, and that line started blurring if you looked at it too long. He was set to work it out for himself, with his fingers turning that quarter over and over again, but he was interrupted by a shadow falling across the table. He looked up at the unflinchingly eager face of a young woman clutching a badge in one hand. The name wasn’t decipherable with half the letters hidden by her fingers but the logo of the newspaper she worked for was clear enough.

“I’m just having,” he looked at his plate and the cup sitting next to it, long since having stopped steaming, “coffee.”

“I’m so sorry to interrupt you,” wasn’t sorry at all. It couldn’t even pretend to be sorry, “I couldn’t walk past you—not with everything that’s happened and now this unknown source claiming Tony Stark has been confined—could I get a quote from you?” She had what had to be a recording device in her other hand and she slowly invited herself to sit at his table. (He wondered exactly where this fell on the ethics scale for reporters, whether or not it was protocol or if protocol even existed for these kinds of situations.) “On the record,” she prompted.

“A quote about what?” Steve asked.

“The Tony Stark situation,” she said. “Where the Avengers are going now? How do you feel about what happened in Sokovia?”

The trouble was, people thought Steve was naive and trusting. They thought he believed the things that he was told, and that he walked into things shielded by his ignorance of the scary things that people hid behind their lies. If you heard that about yourself often enough, if you confused trustworthy with trusting and hopeful with naïve, you started to believe it. He could imagine Maria Hill running damage control, so angry she was foaming at the mouth, and the thought made him sit up straighter, made his mouth quirk up into a smile.

“I think Sokovia was a tragedy and I wish we could have done more than we were allowed to do in the aftermath. Our team is working with reputable charities to get supplies and assistance to where it’s most needed.” That sounded like something Maria would say, or something she’d write down for him to say. “The Avengers will do what we have done before, we will go where we are needed.” He flattened his hand across the quarter, pressed it into the table top. “Tony—”

“Stark,” she prompted.

“Tony Stark,” sounded like he was just conceding the point to her. It felt unnecessary to say; but she was delighted to hear it. “Continues to be one of our most trusted and valued members.”

“But is that true? We haven’t heard from him in weeks, and with all the rumors circulating about his involvement with creating Ultron—we would just expect to see a much more public response from Stark.”

Well there wouldn’t be one because Tony was trapped in an alternate world. Steve looked at her eager face, at the way the other patrons had gotten quiet, at how their heads were tilted to turn their ears toward him and he cleared his throat. “Tony is my friend,” sounded just like he meant it, “he was not responsible for Ultron,” wiped the smile right off the reporter’s face, “he’s not answering accusations because he’s busy, he’s working to find a way to make our world safer, to be able to answer threats like Ultron, and the Chitauri, and Hydra. That seems like a better use of his time and talent than trying to convince people of what they already know.”

“What do they already know?”

“The so-called experts on the news programs that say they have proof that Ultron was built by Tony Stark know as much about robots as I do, ma’am. Good luck on the story,” he smiled at her as he stood up and the quarter (warmed by his hand) slid off the table and hit the sidewalk. 

“So, he’s really your friend?” she asked, half turned in the chair, trying to catch him before he got too far away.

“I trust Tony Stark with my life,” he answered, “and he’s never let me down.” 

(It was easier than it looked, staring people straight in the face and telling them things they wanted to hear. Easier to stretch the truth than he expected.)


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

# SIDE B

Three years, one month, and two days ago, a force much more formidable and more hostile than an army of aliens marched right into his apartment with all the presumption of welcome. Steve could remember it in fine details, the ache of his body and the throb of a headache that must have been one hell of a concussion. He had been clinging to sleep with his fingers and toes, trying to keep himself from waking up to the noise of the life trying to proceed as normal just beyond his window. 

That was one thing that hadn’t changed between his childhood and this miserable modern time, people kept moving forward. They never stopped moving forward, never stopped striving to retain a sense of normalcy no matter irrevocably their lives had been changed. 

Steve was wearing sweats and a shirt that stuck to the bloodspots from bandages he needed to change. Half-awake and not nearly prepared to defend himself, he suddenly found himself standing half-bent over, looking at the half-purpled face of Tony God-Damn Stark.

“We need to talk about the missile,” Tony said.

“The missile?” Steve folded one of his hands across the back of the couch that seemed sturdy, and stood closest and he leaned half his weight on it as casually as he could manage. 

“Yes,” was sharp, her eyes focused on his shirt, on the bleed-through bits and then back up to his face as if she were embarrassed to have taken note of it, “the nuclear warhead that a counsel of jackasses decided to point at New York? I carried it,” her finger touched her chest before pointing upward, “through a hole in space—any of this,” was dripping sarcasm, “ring a bell?”

“Yes.”

“You work for these people,” she said. Her shoulders weren’t shrugging but they were suggesting a shrug with how her body moved. Steve couldn’t swear that he’d put too much thought into how she moved before that moment (outside the battlefield, that is) so he wasn’t prepared for how quickly she could move when she needed to. He wasn’t prepared for her to be so close he could smell her shampoo (something sweet, something soft) as her fingers coiled up in his shirt and mercilessly pulled it away from the wounds it was sticking to. “God damn it, Rogers,” she breathed in a gasp.

“It’s fine.”

Tony didn’t call him a liar out loud. She was kind enough to let the accusation sit right on her face where he could see it for himself. “Come on, lay down. Do you have a first aid kit?”

“I’m fine,” Steve repeated. But Tony was already working her way through cabinets and closets to find the first aid kit that he didn’t own. It was just as easy to lift an arm and point her toward the bathroom where he kept antiseptic, salve and bandages as it was to let her rifle through his entire apartment. He told himself it was only the path of least resistance to lay down, and that it was polite to let her do whatever she wanted. (Of course, back in those days, when Steve was still measuring his new life in weeks and months and not yet in years, he was under the impression that women were reliably irrational and must be indulged at times. Back then he still thought women like Peggy were exceptions and not the norm. He was stupid back in those days.) The couch was as comfortable as a pile of bricks.

“You’re no use to me dead,” Tony said when she was back, clutching the supplies against her chest. They whole lot was dropped on his coffee table before she pulled a pair of scissors out of her back pocket. His T-shirt split right down the middle before he even caught on that she was going to cut it. There weren’t _many_ wounds on his torso but they were so ugly that it made it look worse than it was. “Has a medical professional looked at these?”

“I looked at them.”

“I didn’t know they gave out medical degrees at Auburndale Art School,” Tony quipped. Her fingers prodded at the wounds, pushing at the skin around them, her mouth pulled downward in a frown that didn’t change regardless of what she found. When she looked up at his face, her cheeks were vaguely pink. “Howard collected biographies about you. Not exactly inspired reading.”

“Collected?” Steve repeated. “There were enough written to warrant a collection?”

“I’ll show you sometime,” Tony said. It must have just been to distract him before she poured the antiseptic on the wounds. That was like a low fire, hot and smoldering. It wouldn’t have been if he’d done a better job of taking care of the wounds the night before but sleep had seemed (at that time) more important than bothering. (And how many lectures had he given out to the men under his command, about proper wound care and infection and death? Too many.)

“What about the missile?”

“You work for the assholes that launched it.”

“So do you.”

Tony snorted. She picked up a damp rag to (mercilessly) scrub the wound clean. It was pink with his fresh blood before she was satisfied. “I don’t work for them,” seemed to be ignoring the obvious fact that she did, in fact, work for SHIELD, “they don’t pay me,” was a quick smile, “I can walk away and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.”

“Are you?” He had to grit his teeth a minute, to close his eyes and concentrate on how perfectly small the discomfort of the aggravated wound really was. Maybe he might have had a better time remembering that he’d suffered worse if his whole body wasn’t screaming in perfect unison all about how abused it was. “Walking away?”

Tony sat back, let her arms rest on her knees, let her hands hang at her wrists. “I don’t trust SHIELD. I don’t trust Fury but even I,” her hand moved to gesture at her own body, “can’t ignore the obvious. The Avengers Initiative makes sense. I just don’t think we should be under the control of a counsel of morons that are comfortable with the sort of collateral damage detonating a nuclear warhead in a densely populated city entails.”

“I didn’t think you cared,” Steve said.

Tony laughed at that, nodding her head along with the idea until her frown became a smile (and he learned all about that smile, all about how dangerous it was, about her clenched teeth just behind it, he learned it later, but he didn’t know anything about it then). “I thought you did,” she said.

“I think wars should be fought by soldiers,” Steve agreed. “I don’t think civilians deserve to suffer.”

“Good,” was the sound of Tony picking up bandages, “so we’re in agreement. Obviously, I can get Bruce on my side. Natasha likes me well enough, but I think she likes you better. Clint will go anywhere she goes. So that just leaves Thor.”

“Leaves Thor for what?” Steve asked.

The sound of the tape being ripped away from the roll was a threat in the quiet. Steve was trying to keep up with a conversation that hadn’t even (to his knowledge) happened, and Tony was just mumbling, “hold that right there,” as if there was no need to discuss anything. 

“Why do you need Bruce on your side?” His hand curled around Tony’s wrist as her thumbs were pushing the tape down on his skin and she looked up at his face. He could see it then, not much longer than a blink of an eye, the rage of anger that she hide behind her smile. Just for a second he thought he’d done far smarter things in life than grab Tony Stark by the wrist, but it was there-and-gone. His fist uncurled, he said, “I thought you were walking away.”

“I am,” she assured him. “I’m taking the Avengers with me.”

“Tony,” Steve whispered.

“It’s like this, Rogers. Either we’re going to stand by and pretend that the people we’re working with didn’t just try to blow up this city or we do something about it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got enough blood on my hands.” Then she sighed, and she said, “I don’t _need_ you, but I _want_ you.”

She meant she wanted his legacy, his name, his face and his image. She wanted the nostalgia he brought with him, and the goodwill his star-spangled-suit won them in Washington. But just then, aching from a battle unlike any he’d faced before, he only heard that he was _wanted_ , that he could be of _use_ , that he could make the _choice_. It was more than he’d been offered since Erskine had walked into the exam room of the enlistment tent at the World Expo. 

“Promise me we go where we’re needed, regardless of politics,” Steve said.

Tony smiled, all soft at the edges, like she was fond of how stupid he was. She said, “do I look like a woman who cares about rules?”

# A SIDE

There wasn’t much _grass_ left in Sokovia. There was dirt, and roads that were covered in dirt, and ground that had been grass once but were now buried in _dirt_. There were buildings that rose out of the ground like monsters, covered in dirt so thickly there was no telling from a casual glance where there had once been windows and doors. 

Even the trees were covered in dust, the leaves coated so thickly that no amount of wind seemed capable of shaking them clean again. There were no birds—wasn’t that funny? How she’d just noticed it, how it didn’t occur to her until just-this-minute, standing on a patch of what could have been grass once, with her head tipped to look at the dusty brown leaves of the tree stretching valiantly toward the sun. 

Time was relative here; there were no jobs to rush to. There was no traffic of people going to-and-fro. It moved in restless circles, little mobs of people moving from one charity vendor to another. The lingering survivors talking in daydream voices about the luxury of everyday events: a shower, a hot meal, a working light bulb. Desperate families had begged for extra provisions for the walk from the dirt clod of a city, out through the dusty forest and to the safety of real civilization beyond the blocked road.

But here.

Right here,

This place that might have been a park once,

Time was completely _meaningless_.

The vultures were still collecting their bits of machine parts, stowing them away in their boxes and cataloguing the debris piece-by-piece. A clutch of experts, a few aging men with clipboards, had erected a tent and sat like fat kings individually describing every piece by it’s weight, length, and color before labelling it and throwing it with the others.

“When I was a child,” that was the witch, the girl on the video that wiggled her pretty fingers and put nightmares into Tony’s head, “this was a park. I played here when I was a child, with my brother.”

Tony looked at her, at the intentional drabness of her clothes, and how her hands were tucked into her pockets, at how tears gathered just at the edge of her eyes and she looked at the ruins of her city like a child at a parent’s grave. (And this witch, this miserable girl, she had buried her parents and her brother already. She would know how it felt, to persist in the awful reality of living when you’d rather not.)

“You are helping to clear the road,” Wanda said.

“I was,” Tony assured her. “Before the morons came. Now none of us are clearing it.” She tipped her head back far enough to see Vision standing what must have seemed a respectable distance away, aiming for inconspicuous with a deep red face and a glowing yellow stone in his forehead. “Does Steven know you’re here?”

“Yes,” Wanda said. “This was my home.”

Happy was back, holding what passed for lunch in a disaster zone, looking pale under the ruddy-red of his flushed cheeks. His breath was labor from the jog that had brought him the distance between where he realized it was Wanda in the park and right here three steps to Tony’s left hand. “Hi,” he said with no friendliness. 

(How simple, how uncomplicated it was to be Happy, to simply decide you were a match for any threat and act accordingly. Never mind neither of them were capable of defeating Wanda or Vision in a fair fight. Happy only needed to believe he wouldn’t be immediately defeated.)

“Mr. Hogan,” Vision said. He closed the gap between where he’d been standing and the growing cluster. Happy regarded him with hostility that confused Vision but his protective posture did nothing to de-escalate the situation.

Wanda was only looking at her, staring right at her without any hint of shame or embarrassment. It was unabashed curiosity, and just the barest grasp of self-control keeping her from rummaging through the interior of Tony’s skull. It would have been a simple matter of deciding to do it, and yet Wanda was keeping her hands at her sides and where they could be seen. “Why did you come here?”

“Where I’m from,” Tony said. “We don’t leave messes like this. There’s protocols, and procedures that are followed to make sure this,” she lifted a hand, motioned at the dirt in the air, “is taken care of. I came to help,” was simple enough. 

I came because I couldn’t stay there. I came because I’m filling up with fire. I came because I had to move, to work, to do _something_ with the anger that was growing-and-growing-and- _growing_ faster than she could work it off. 

No, all that was too much to say, when she’d come here to do exactly what she was doing. To help people that shouldn’t have been abandoned to live with the aftermath of a battle they hadn’t waged. (Wars should be fought by soldiers, as Steve would say.) 

“Why did you come?” Tony asked.

Wanda looked sad, quiet, unsure of exactly how she’d found herself _here_. “This was my home. I became this,” her hands lifted, a brief flicker of pink wove in and out around her fingers, “to help my home, to protect it. I did neither.”

Happy shifted his weight, held out the bag of lunch. “There’s plenty of help needed here,” he said. “If that’s what you came to do.”

“Happy,” Tony said.

“I believe Mr. Hogan is correct,” Vision cut in. “Perhaps we should begin our time here by finding where we would be most helpful?”

Wanda was still looking at Tony (with that look, like she wanted to crack open Tony’s skull like an egg), but she nodded her head. “Yes,” was agreeing, “we should. We will see you?”

“On the road,” Tony assured her.

Happy was bristling with distaste, like a cat hissing at water, long after Wanda had walked away. “She’s unnerving,” he whispered, “it’s a feeling, right here,” he patted his stomach. “I can’t explain it.”

Tony didn’t have the patience to explain what that feeling was. That was the sensation prey felt in the presence of the predator that was going to eat it, the realization that it was unsafe, that it would be a meal soon. She didn’t say that, but rub her thumb against the tracker planted in her forearm. “She’s just a kid,” was exactly what Steven wanted the world to believe, “she thought she was doing the right thing.”

# A SIDE

“You cannot go alone.”

The argument had gone stale but that didn’t mean that it was over. Steve dropped the bag he’d packed on the ground, considered if he wanted to bother with a suit or make do with just the shield. (For that matter, if he wanted to take the shield at all.) 

“Apparently, he can,” Maria Hill said sourly. She was standing at attention, arms crossed over her chest and feet apart as she glared at him from outside the doorway. 

“I told you that I was sorry,” Steve said (again).

Maria’s eyebrow indicated that she’d heard it, but she knew, like he knew, and Natasha who was rolling her eyes knew that he didn’t mean it. No, Steve wasn’t sorry in the least about talking to a reporter. He wasn’t sorry about the news report circulating the internet that he was best-friends-forever with Tony Stark. 

**Steve Rogers is Not a Robot Expert** was a flashy headline in between a six dozen others that were fawning over how he was protecting his buddy. His _friend_. It was a little hard to stomach the headlines while he was picking out what sort of weapons he wanted to take with him to Sokovia. 

“You’re not a match for her,” Natasha said. Her fingers were digging into her hips so hard her fingernails were white from the pressure. 

“He would be if he’d hit her back,” Maria mumbled under her breath.

“I appreciate the concern—”

“This isn’t about you,” Natasha said. “Have you been paying attention to what’s happened? _She_ created this entire situation! She’s the reason that Wanda and Vision are in Sokovia, why Rhodey doesn’t trust you, why _Pepper_ just asked you to go fight her.”

“And you’re?” Steve asked. He picked the shield up and slid his arm through the straps. (There was a memory there, of her voice through the suit, the way the metallic fingers tightened against the shield and how she said _nobody understand you_ like she _did_ just before she snapped a bone in his arm.) “What? Angry that she beat you at your own game?”

“I don’t manipulate my own team.” Natasha put her hand up before anything could be said, “not like this. Not to _fight_. Fine,” both her palms were showing, her face was making a mask of honesty that didn’t quite sit straight, “I’ve made suggestions, I’ve nudged people into doing things they were going to do anyway but not _this_. She _wants_ to fight you.”

But _why_ was the thing he couldn’t figure out. Why did she hate him, why did she look at him like she was expecting to see anything else? Why did she smile at him like she knew things he didn’t even have the imagination to think up?

(Do you still believe in God, Steven?)

“You can’t go alone,” Natasha said (again).

Steve looked at Maria, “what did you say about the Avengers showing up in Sokovia right now?”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Maria said. But sixteen hours ago, she had been furious at him about speaking to reporters without witnesses, without guidance, without a script, and she’d been hissing mad about the idea of any-of-them, much less all-of-them showing their faces in Sokovia when the entire elaborate puppet show of proving the whole fucking thing wasn’t their fault was so precisely balanced it couldn’t stand any disruption without falling apart.

“You stood there and let her punch you in the face,” Natasha said. 

“So that’s what this is about,” Steve asked, “you think she can beat me in a fight? You think Tony can beat me?”

“Our Tony?” Natasha snapped back (as sharp as a slap), “I don’t think he’d even try. This isn’t _our_ Tony.”

“Natasha.” His head was filling up with noise and a dull ache at his temples. He closed his eyes for a second, long enough to tighten and loosen his grip on the shield and then he looked at her, at the angry pink spots on her cheeks and the defiant slant of her body, “I can handle myself in a fight. Rhodey told me how to disarm the suit. I’ll be fine.”

Just there, just for a second, was a look so similar to the way this new Tony looked at him. It was pity, and anger, and something almost like regret. Natasha just shook her head. “Fine,” was agreeing to disagree. She turned on her heels to leave.

Maria looked at him with uncomplicated disapproval. “Natasha’s right. You know that. This is what _she_ wanted to happen.”

“Well,” Steve said as he ducked to pick his bag up, “I hate to get a reputation for disappointing a woman.”

Maria’s smile called him an idiot, but she managed not to say it out loud. “Be careful,” she said instead, “and when she hits you, hit her back? This isn’t the forties and she isn’t defenseless.”

“I know how to fight,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” 

That seemed to bring the greater conversation to a halt. Maria slid out of his way and motioned him onward toward the plane. It was small, unmarked, and piloted by Friday. One of the better things about Tony Stark, perhaps the most useful if not the most sane, was how prolific his creations truly were. Steve barely had the time to think of the need for something and Tony had already constructed exactly the solution. Like this, an unmarked plane requiring no pilot to carry him back to a country he definitely was not welcome in. Some quiet, and little, and hard to detect that give him a decent chance of succeeding.

There had been no reason to have this plane. (And Steve had said as much when Tony showed it to him, had pointed out it was barely big enough to fit enough of them to matter. But Tony had known, long before Steve, that sooner or later they’d need it.)

Inside was just big enough for a(n unnecessary) pilot’s seat and a single jump seat. Sam was already sitting there, legs sprawled out in the limited space with the Falcon suit tucked under his seat and a small carry-on bag hanging off his knee. “I know you meant to invite me,” he said.

“You knew that?” Steve repeated.

Sam looked up at him, smiling like a demon with the light of the smart phone illuminating his face. “Didn’t you?”

“Are you ready, Captain Rogers?” Friday asked.

Steve didn’t answer either of them before he stowed his bag and sat in the pilot’s seat. Even then, he took a moment to think-and-rethink this plan before he said, “yes,” like he meant it.

# B SIDE

The bedroom was empty when Tony (fresh from a shower to rinse off last night’s nightmare) went past it. There wasn’t even any evidence that Steve had slept in it at all. That was a waste because he knew from experience there were few things in life as comfortable as the bed in the master bedroom. (At least, back when he could sleep soundly.) It shouldn’t have bothered him but he couldn’t help but think, he hadn’t seen the man since they arrived at the house yesterday.

Pepper didn’t even look up at him when Tony went through the living room toward the kitchen, or when he came back with a bagel, but she did look up when he came back up from the empty lab.

Her face was perfectly bland, a strained smile under pale eyebrows and pretty blue eyes as she rested one hand against the tablet in her lap. “Yes?”

“Just to be clear,” he said instead of asking where Steve was, “I _didn’t_ do anything to you. I did _not_ engineer this,” he waved his hand to indicate the world he was living in, “I did not try to manipulate you and pretend it was because I was concerned about you.”

Pepper picked the tablet up and leaned forward far enough to drop it on the glass table in front of her. Then she straightened her back and gently rested her palms on her thigh. “I wouldn’t dream of thinking you were capable of this,” she spun her finger in a circle to mimic the motion he’d made. “I didn’t _pretend_ to be concerned about you. You have done nothing but cause me _concern_ me since you arrived.”

“I appreciate that, Ms. Potts but I’m a grown man.”

“An alcoholic,” she said. “Insomniac,” two of her fingers lifted, “with nightmares,” another, “who apparently has no functional team in his world,” another finger, “obviously trying to cope with guilt over something he did recently,” she had to lift a finger of the opposite hand. “Should I continue?”

“I don’t remember you being this—”

“Honest?”

“That’s not the word I would have picked, no.” He considered the merits of defending himself, and the general usefulness of walking away. (But Tony Stark, well, he was never exactly known for walking away from a fight just because he couldn’t win it.) 

“Maybe its because I never fell in love with you,” Pepper said.

Tony snorted, it bubbled up into a giggle, and he grit his teeth just before it could graduate into a laugh. “You’re kidding me, right?” He slid forward on his socked feet, pointed at the seat across from her without asking if he could sit and matched her upright posture with a careless sprawl of his own. “You’re so in love with her it hurts.” His smile was as vile and as mean as her words. “I don’t blame you. I’m lovable but it would never work out between us.” (Now that didn’t quite come out as he meant it to sound.)

Pepper looked at her fingertips, considered them and then looked back up at him, “you’re really insufferable.”

“I’ve heard that’s one of my better qualities, Ms. Potts.”

“Then I cannot imagine what your bad qualities must be,” she returned. The moment stretched, the tension twisted and then she looked sideways toward the kitchen, as if she expected someone to walk out of it (but there wasn’t anyone in it to care) before she looked right at his face. “I love her. I am not _in love_ with her. How could I love a person who behaves so recklessly? Who puts themselves in the needless danger she does?”

“How could you love someone that didn’t?” Tony asked. That was the thing he’d always wondered, when Pepper found him the first time, when she swore she was quitting, that she couldn’t stand it, that she wouldn’t be part of it. How she could have tolerated everything he’d ever done, and she couldn’t tolerate _this_. “How could you love someone that didn’t care about what the weapons were doing in the world? I told myself I was making them for the right side—but that’s? That’s not a real thing, is it? Are we the right side? The people on the other side of the bombs don’t think we are. The civilians my weapons killed didn’t think it. Obadiah didn’t think we were. How could you love the person I was?”

Pepper’s cheeks were pink spotted, and her hands were flat against her thigh again. She was holding herself together with gritted teeth and a disapproving frown. “I don’t see it like that,” she said through a thick throat. “I see bullet holes in the armor. I see the bruises on her face. I see the newsreel of her falling out of the sky.”

“So, you loved me because I was safe,” he said, “and you can’t love me now because I’m not?”

“I can’t stand it,” Pepper said so quietly it was almost a whisper. “I can’t think of it. I can’t stomach it. I think of it and I think of how I’ll have to bury her next to her parents. I’ll have to live without her. I can’t stand that.”

Tony ran his hand across his brand-new jeans, picking at lint that didn’t exist. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered it before; just that he hadn’t ever _heard_ the words exactly like that. It was Pepper’s voice and Pepper’s face but it _wasn’t_ Pepper. “Where’s Steve?”

Pepper snorted. “You never change,” was as exasperated as it was relieved. “Steve went for a run.”

“How long does that usually last for?”

“An hour,” she said.

“How long has he been gone?” Tony looked at his watch, (and how did it get to be ten AM already), and then at her.

“About four hours ago.” She picked the tablet up again and plucked a tissue out of her purse on the floor by her feet. She dabbed her eyes and tucked it away again. “You’re not wrong that I want to protect her,” she said. “You are wrong to think that I don’t care about you. I shouldn’t, and I’m not Steve, but I look at you and I see her a little. Just enough that I can’t help caring.” She sounded as if it were a hassle. “Happy obviously feels strongly.”

“Well, _Happy_ ,” Tony said.

Pepper smiled. “You look better.”

Better was relative. Better was electric heat in his chest that filled every part of his body with energy that he hadn’t felt in months. The heat was dim in the morning, it grew through the day until it was lava in-between his ribs, but right _now_ , it was manageable. Right _now_ he could do anything. “I’ll be in the lab,” he said.

“Of course,” Pepper agreed.

And there he stood, in the lab, looking at all the screens and the things he owned. He drew a breath in and let it out again. “Jarvis,” he said.

“Sir?”

“Let me know as soon as Steve gets back. Play something loud, Daddy’s got work to do.” And he smiled (because it was ridiculous but it still felt _right_ ). The music came through the speakers like a scream and he closed his eyes and thought, as loudly and as steadily as he could, 

_we have to get home_.

# A SIDE

The bandages on her fingers were as annoying as the heat of the day mixing with the dirt on the back of her neck. The sensation of being perpetually unclean reminded her of half-buried hellholes. (It reminded her of the men like slobbery dogs, waiting just beyond the door for the word from their master they could take anything they wanted from her.) Without a useful occupation, time dragged on-and-on. 

And, truthfully, the only thing Tony Stark wasn’t good at was following rules. She managed to walk in a large enough circle that none of the unhurried assholes cataloguing their finds took note of her. She broke through the trees half-a-mile (or so) up the road, expecting to find nothing but debris and cracked concrete. 

Wanda was standing there with her fingers coiled inward toward her palms, her arms raised up just high enough to give the impression of a man conducting a particularly lackluster orchestra. The noise of Tony’s boots had startled her; the bits of things that had been suspended in the air suddenly fell. Wanda’s shoes scraped across the ground and she straightened up to standing and her arms dropped as surely as the tree limbs that had been floating a moment ago. She was _alone_ (but no less dangerous). “I was,” she started to say and then decided no explanation was really needed.

The trouble was, Tony was no good at not starting fights. She excelled at conflict. She was born with the troubling need to be smartest, and fastest, and _best_. (Maybe she wasn’t born with it, maybe it was another of those fun things that Howard gave her when she was a child.) There wasn’t much room for friendships when you were too busy making sure nobody could keep up with you. “Where’s the,” Tony lifted a hand toward her forehead, to indicate the yellow glowing stone, “whatever he calls himself.”

“Vision.” (That bit wasn’t important.) “I left him in town. Where is your man?”

“Not my man,” Tony said. “He’s looking for me, probably.” (There she was, hopelessly, hilariously outmatched by a girl half her age. There was no smarter at forty five than she was at forty four.) “So, you have to explain this to me, because I just don’t get it. Why do you hate him?”

Wanda let out a breath as if she’d been holding it all this time. As if she had any reason to think Tony was more of a threat than a buzzing bug that wouldn’t be squished. “His weapons killed my parents.”

“Your hometown’s a warzone. I doubt he was the only one making the weapons that destroyed it.” Tony’s hands were resting on her hips, her body was poised to evade an attack if necessary. “I don’t mean to sound callous. My parents were murdered. I had tea with the guy that killed them. Sometimes,” she shrugged, “I think about how good it would feel to crush his windpipe with my bare hands. I can’t and most of the time I don’t want to.”

“I was a child,” Wanda countered.

“You’re not now.”

“I don’t hate him now.” Every syllable bordered on believable. It was the kind of statement a man made when he wanted it to be true; as if he could bend reality to make it fit. (Just like Steve fucking Rogers, always warping the world into something nicer to look at.) “Are you what you say you are?”

“Yes.”

Wanda’s fingers twitched, the tips glowed pink like little lightning bugs. “You believe this is my fault?” 

“I think you deserve your part of the blame,” Tony said, but she sighed and rubbed her face and _tried_ because Steve was always whispering in her ear about how she could _try_. “I’m biased,” she said. That had been (but not her) in the center of angry faces laying blame and that had been Steve (but not her Steve) standing by and allowing it to happen. “Things aren’t like this in my world. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you where I’m from.” That didn’t satisfy Wanda’s curiosity. It didn’t help her work through whatever was making the frown on her face grown sharper. “I’m not here to help you.”

“Why are you here?”

“I have no fucking clue.”

That made Wanda smile, almost by surprise, and then it flattened out again. “Steve is my friend.” There was no telling if that was meant to be a threat. No telling by how Wanda stated it as an awkward fact. “Why do you hate him?”

(Tony didn’t hate Steve, she couldn’t imagine it, but it felt like she did. It felt like it right now, with a great yawning beast in her chest scratching and clawing to get out. It was a ruthless thing; the loneliness and the _yearning_ to be where she belonged, to be where things made sense, to be back where she could love him.) “He didn’t protect his team. The Steve I know, he protects his team. The Steve you know? He doesn’t.”

Wanda considered that a moment and then, just when it seemed she wasn’t going to address it (or maybe that she’d settle for defending Steve for the sake of it) she said, “you do not seem like you need someone to protect her.”

“Everyone needs somewhere to feel safe.”

Happy broke through the trees behind her, puffing for breath and red in the face. “There you are,” was grasping at casual that it didn’t manage. “I’ve been looking,” he gasped, “for you everywhere.”

“We’re clearing the road,” Tony said. She looked back at Wanda who only just managed to nod.

# B SIDE

The Diamond (always spoke with the appropriate capital letters) had seemed, at the time, like a waste. It wasn’t that Steve didn’t enjoy it; it wasn’t that he wasn’t excited about the possibility of it. It had always been simply that it made no sense, in the aftermath of New York, while the whole world was rearranging itself to make space for the reality of aliens and Norse gods come to real life, it seemed completely unnecessary.

Tony had given him half a dozen answers, everything from, _I just need something to keep me busy so I can think_ to _it’s team building, Rogers. If you build it, they will come and—all that_.

It wasn’t until later, when they weren’t always awkwardly aware of where their elbows ended, when they weren’t trying so hard not to touch one another, when they stopped with the pretense of politeness that she’d finally said it, out right, exactly as it was.

Standing here, not even two feet from the home base with a baseball mitt in one hand, wearing sweatpants and a tight T-shirt, she had said: _I built this for you_. Because removed of every other motivation, or every other use, The Diamond had always, always been for Steve. The only thing that Tony couldn’t explain is why she’d pick a baseball diamond, why she’d put so much effort into it, why she’d cared to start at all.

“By all accounts,” was slipping out of his mouth in real time, as his fingers tightened around the bat she’d made for him, “it just doesn’t make sense.” The bat itself had taken her four weeks to finish; not because a baseball bat was overly complex but because she was never satisfied with the look and feel of it. The effort had been worth it in the end, the bat she created was twice as indestructible as the suit she wore into combat. 

It shattered baseballs like they were made of confetti, left them as nothing more than ragged bits showered across the grass. Half The Diamond looked like a warzone with pulled red stitching and white bits; and there was catharsis in the delightful destruction of helpless things. The baseballs couldn’t feel, and didn’t care, wouldn’t be missed in this world. They were bought-and-paid for, loaded up to be pitched to him whenever he felt the need. The sound they made against the bat, just before the impact tore them to shreds wasn’t exactly human and there was relief to that.

Steve Rogers knew what human skulls sounded like when they met very hard surfaces. He knew which bones cracked and which ones shattered, and the symphony of different sounds that made. (He just hadn’t thought he knew the exact sound a throat made when you crushed it with your hands, but maybe he did. Maybe his nightmares were reinvented memories.)

Tony would have said, _everybody needs an outlet_. She was a firm believer in the healing power of transforming things. She _made_ things out scraps of nothing. Steve made scraps out of things. But it was all transforming. _you can’t outrun yourself_ , was what she said to him after dark, when they were still trying to be friends. 

They knew that, the pair of them, no matter how long or hard or fast you ran, you couldn’t ever escape the things you carried on your back. 

Across The Diamond, the pitching machine wound down to a stop; there were no more baseballs to destroy. Steve let the bat fall, kept one hand around the grip and lifted his free hand to push through his hair. The wind was warm but welcome as it went across his face.

Every good American boy loved baseball, and most of the good American boys could play it. Bucky had played baseball; Steve had watched from the side. Through no choice of his own, he had simply never managed to make it to the field. There hadn’t been enough time _after_ Erskine died to take a swing at a baseball; but there had always been talk of what a fantastic publicity event it would be for Captain America to play a game. 

Tony Stark had made the time, and the equipment, and the team. She’d stood not three free from home base with a mitt in one hand and her voice as soft as kitten fur, looking him straight in the face when she said, _I made this for you_ , but never _why_.

Steve had been a challenge she’d undertaken once. An aggravation she’d deemed necessary. A team mate she wanted on her side when things were bad. But, on three feet from home base, she looked at him like he was nothing but a person. As if, to her surprise as much as his, he’d managed to overcome the obstacles and become _real_ and _valued_. If Steve had been better, or more aware, or capable of it, he would have kissed her that night. He would have understood what she was saying when she said _I made this for you_ , but he was young and stupid and _new_ to this ugly modern world.

Steve stood at home base, feeling embarrassed by the offering, saying _thank you_.

It was possible (probable, even) that Steve had simply always been stupid. It became more likely every minute of the day; until it seemed like the only logical conclusion. Because he’d loved Peggy but he hadn’t _tried_. He’d loved Bucky but he never _said it_ , at least not outright, not in the way that meant something, not in a way to stop Bucky from wandering from him to the next pretty thing his eyes laid eyes on.

Steve loved Tony, but he hadn’t protected her. He hadn’t held on tight enough.

# B SIDE

The phantom feeling wasn’t _constant_. It seemed to come and go without warning, sneaking in like a high tide, swallowing up the sand so slowly that anybody could be forgiven for not recognizing they were about to drown. Tony didn’t notice when it started but the lack of it was so abrupt and so startling that it was impossible to notice.

“Jarvis.” It felt something like falling, only without motion, and he landed exactly where he sat with his head spinning all the while it stayed perfectly still. “Make a note of the time, and what I was just doing.”

“Where should I make a note sir?”

“Start a new project file.”

“What shall I call it, sir?”

Tony shoved his thumbs against the ridge of his eyebrow, tried to think about anything but how he felt alien in his own body. It was a tingly sensation at first, that settled into something like a low burn. (Not entirely physical, it felt quite a bit like the sudden realization that you were alone in the world. The breath-stealing sensation of isolation so overwhelming it was hard to think of proper words to use.) “Kansas,” he said.

“Of course, sir,” Jarvis agreed.

The music didn’t resume, the lab door opened behind him and Happy was there with a plate of sandwiches and a look of keen distress. “Everything okay?” 

“Yeah.” (But it wasn’t, not really. He had lost her. Since he still couldn’t explain how he’d ever found her or why he had any reason to believe it was her that he could feel in his own body, there was no hope of figuring how to get her back.) “What’s this?”

“Tuna salad,” Happy said. He looked for anywhere to set it down, didn’t find anywhere and simply stood next to him holding the plate out like an offering. “So, what are you working on?”

The gauntlet that he’d left in his world, a perfectly concise bit of machinery that went entirely unnoticed by anyone that might have been looking. Tony leaned back into the chair and regarded the sandwiches (plain, soft white bread, overly moist tuna) and took one in the vain hope that it would get Happy to move a few feet back. “Nothing important,” he said. “Thanks.”

Happy didn’t move at all. Instead he hesitated, shifted around on his feet until he could see Tony better and then he resumed standing silently at his side. “It’s gone,” he said.

(Aside from the texture issues of the sandwich, it was actually fairly good.) “I know,” he tapped his chest, right where the arc reactor was still sitting in her chest, “I felt it.”

“What does that mean?” Happy asked. 

Tony shrugged. “I don’t know—has Steve come back?”

“No.”

That meant the man had been gone for almost ten hours, out in the world carrying his nightmares around in his skull, acting as if nobody in the world cared where he went. Not that Tony cared specifically, and maybe less so now that he was all alone in his own body again. (Or maybe more, because it had been easy enough to get things done with her frustration burning in his chest, but the feeling faded and it left a dull spot. Now it was nothing but him, and his worry, and his fear.) “Does he do that? Disappear for hours without telling someone?”

“I think she usually knows where he is,” Happy said. “Not that she’s got a GPS on him.” Happy picked up one of the sandwiches, regarded it and then set it back down. “I don’t know what happened, I was making these and then it was just gone. What did we do that was different?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “I need more information, more data points, more— Where would he go?”

“Steve?”

Tony nodded.

Happy shrugged. “The Diamond? He goes up there sometimes, or there’s an Avenger’s office nearby. Sometimes he just runs.”

“Runs?”

“He likes running.”

Tony sighed. He leaned forward again and dropped the half of his sandwich he hadn’t eaten on the plate. “Thanks, Happy,” he said (again), but, “I’ve got to get back to this.”

Happy didn’t want to go but lingering was awkward enough that he didn’t want to do that either. He retreated up the stairs and the music came back on. Tony leaned his elbow against the edge of his desk and rested his chin in his hand. He tried to capture the exact feeling he’d tied to her, something like anger and loneliness, but even the memory of it was out of focus. 

“Do you know where Steve is?” Tony asked. “Jarvis?”

“I do not, sir,” Jarvis assured him. “Would you like me to start monitoring social media and local news, sir?”

Yes. Yes, he would like that. Tony shook his head, “no. He knows where the house is. Tell me when he gets back.” It sounded like something he’d already said once (today) but it felt different this time. “Where was I?” he looked down at the half-finished design and picked up his pen again.

# A SIDE

“Bathrooms,” Sam said (again). He had started the refrain two hours ago, when the trip that verged from long to unbearably long. It was verging into torture, cycling through an endless, quiet stream of nothing but the sound of their breathing. “For those of us that do not have superhuman bladders they’re important,” was another addendum to a one-sided conversation. “Do you pee? I was just assuming, I don’t actually know. I guess that’s not something you normally ask and I’ve never seen you—for that matter, how do you take a piss in that suit? Maybe you don’t.”

Steve had turned the pilot’s seat around hours ago, when looking out the windows at the nothing all around them had settled into his gut like an unending growl. It was easier to watch Sam—animated and amused by himself—holding a lecture about the lack of toilet facilities on the stealth jet. “It’s not easy,” he conceded.

“Some wet wipes,” Sam added, “the least he could have done is leave us some wet wipes? This is _Stark_ , he just looks like the kind of guy that has a body guard carrying wet wipes with him all the time,” and this amused Sam all over again. He did a great show of wiping his hands with little wipes and daintily handing them off to whoever he imagined Tony’s bodyguard would be. “I heard a rumor he doesn’t like to be handed things? How does that work? Do they just set it on a table and he picks it up?”

“There’s probably wet wipes somewhere,” Steve said. For that matter if they pushed enough buttons they’d probably find a kitchen, a bathroom, and a sleeper sofa but it was a matter of knowing which buttons to push. They were just as likely to flip a switch that blew up the ship as not. (No, that was unkind. That wasn’t true. Tony would probably have labelled anything that would kill someone.) 

Sam huffed. “I’m not looking.” He looked at his phone screen, sighed and set it back against his thigh. “So,” he said. “You’re best friends with Iron Man now?”

“I’ll throw you out of this plane,” Steve said.

“Come on, it’s _me_ ,” didn’t exactly invite any confidence after the forty-minute comedy act, ‘where’s the bathroom’. Sam shifted so he was sitting back in the creaking seat, leaned forward with his arms across his thighs and levelled him with a look that invited confessions. “I think it’s important to know the motivations of the guy I’m following into conflict. Are we going here to protect your friend?”

“There’s no other reason to go,” Steve said. “It’s not a conflict. It doesn’t have to be a conflict—she said she didn’t want to fight so we’ll go, we’ll tell her that she either has to leave or turn the suit off—”

“On the way back, we’ll stop at the North Pole and have hot chocolate with Santa Claus,” Sam suggested. His tone was light, but he wasn’t smiling, “I just think it’s important that everyone,” but he meant _Steve_ , “understand that this _isn’t_ the Tony Stark we know. This is a woman who introduced herself by attacking the compound. You can’t just stroll up to her and give her an ultimatum and expect her to take that well.”

To be fair, their Tony didn’t take ultimatums very well either. He had an odd way of removing the conditions of the original statement. It was as if he couldn’t concentrate on limited options when there were infinite possibilities. ‘Give us the suit or leave Sokovia?’ Tony would have simply laughed at them for an utter lack of imagination. “Well, if she doesn’t take it well, I seem to the only one she wants to hurt.”

Sam nodded. “I wonder what you did to her.”

“Nothing.”

“Not _you_ you, but you from over there. I know you don’t have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, but women don’t generally get that angry at you unless you’ve done something.” Sam must have known that first hand, must have had scars to prove it from the way he said it, from how he leaned into the words. “I’m just saying, maybe we don’t walk up and offer a choice.”

There must have been a way to do it; if they had time and enough people to think it up. If they had the ability to infiltrate the city without being noticed. Last minute as it was, with limited resources and Steve’s limited imagination, it all came down to: “we don’t know what kind of weapons she has, Sam. We have to give her the chance to come peacefully because if we don’t—there’s no telling what she will do.”

Sam leaned back again. “Well,” acknowledged the uselessness of arguing, “just remember to duck when she tries to hit you.”


	14. Chapter 14

# SIDE A

Breakfast tasted like freeze dried grass lightly laid across a sampling of twig parts. The label wasn’t written in any language she could read so there was no telling what it actually was. Still, the practice of crunching it between her teeth mimicked the action of eating close enough that it made her stomach stop rumbling. Her daily bottle of water was sitting against the inside of her ankle, balanced on a little mound of dirt that had been blown up against her boot since she sat an hour ago to wait for the road crew to start assembling.

There was no reason to be up before dawn in this desolate little hellhole, but she had found herself too awake to sit still nonetheless. The charity lines started at six, Tony had stopped by the medical tent for new bandages and the breakfast line to retrieve her grassy twig bar. Then she’d sat, until her filthy clothes were coated in a new layer of dirt, and her hair was crusted with it. She sat and twisted her hands at the wrist, thinking about maybe really consider calling for the Mark 42. 

It was a stupid, idle thought. Made up of stupid idle things. The suit wouldn’t help her; it wouldn’t help anyone here. It wouldn’t help the Tony who had to live here when she was through fucking around. (But still, covered in filth, left unfulfilled by the monotony of pointlessly slow work, she _longed_ for the convenience and the efficiency of the suit.) 

“How should I call you?” sounded like her favorite son. (No offense to Dum-E, not offense at all.) It wasn’t him, though. It was only his voice, employed by a thing of unknown potential, wearing a body that too many people had died to make. Vision wasn’t Jarvis, but he looked at Tony the way she thought Jarvis might have if he’d ever had a face. With detached curiosity, buffered and softened by a half-realized fondness. “That is,” Vision corrected, “what is your name?”

“Tony,” she said.

“It would be a fascinating study, to have the time to discuss what is the same and what is different between our worlds. You are unique,” Vision stuttered there, across how to address her. Tony was too familiar and Ms. Tony (undoubtedly) sounded silly to him. There was the matter of whatever remained of Jarvis looking at her and thinking of it’s father. _Mr. Stark_ would have been familiar and welcome but not appropriate. “There are many things we could learn from one another.”

Tony gave up on the pretense of eating, folded the silver wrapper back over the what was left of the bar and tucked in into the front pocket of her jeans. “What can you do?” she asked. Her fingers touched the middle of her own forehead, “with this, what can you do?”

“I am not completely familiar with the extent of my abilities,” Vision said. 

“We have to sharpen the axes,” Tony said. 

Vision was momentarily stalled. He didn’t fidget, but stand perfectly still. It was inhuman, it was unnerving, how his not-at-all human eyes settled on her, and how he took his time about processing what she’d said. “I believe I can assist with that,” he said. “What shall I call you?”

“Tony,” she repeated.

“I do not believe that would be appropriate.”

“There’s nothing else.” Tony picked the water bottle up before she stood, shook the dust off it and motioned toward the road. The blunt axes had been left sticking out of the tree they were attempting to cleave into pieces. They were worth nothing, not even the effort required to pry them loose and take them home. “If you don’t like my name, make something up.”

Vision didn’t frown but nod, slightly, and relent. “Very well, Tony.” There was too much stress put into that last word, it dipped the sentence like a puddle. Vision turned with her. “How sharp would you like them to be?”

“Sharp enough to cut through the trees,” Tony said. “Is Wanda coming?”

“Yes.” Vision plucked the first axe out of the tree without effort, or even the pretense of effort. He was utterly guileless, completely without any hint of irony when he caught her rolling her eyes. “I am strong,” he said.

“I got that,” she motioned at the axe.

Vision didn’t smile precisely, but his lips quirked up at the edges. “You are not much like my memory of Mr. Stark,” he said. “I confess I am not certain how Captain Rogers is so certain that you are who you say you are.”

“Rogers was born with a trusting heart.” (And she wasn’t, and that was that.) 

Vision was quiet a moment, holding an axe balanced right in front of his face so his eyes were staring across the blade to see her. He said only, “I see,” before he refocused on the axe. “This should not be difficult.”

(And weren’t those famous last words.)

# SIDE A

It would have been a lie to say that Steve didn’t need sleep. The serum hadn’t made him immune to the normal conditions of living: he had to eat, and to sleep. Not sleeping left him feeling sluggish the same way it did with anyone (he guessed); his body simply kept going despite it. 

Sam was sleeping off a long flight in the tent behind him. The sky had a murky quality to it, an almost foreboding grayness of incoming rain. Steve had traded the hope for and the pretense of sleep for the uneasiness of watching the sun sneak up behind the clouds. He was dressed in casual clothes, wearing what Tony had referred to as his ‘stealth underwear’ underneath. What it felt like was trying to squeeze his body into a pair of gloves a size too small, but what Tony said it was meant to do was keep all his internal organs on the inside. (He said other things too about impact and support and survival, but the gist was just the insides stay inside.) It was meant to make him less noticeable in unfriendly areas; sitting out in the middle of nowhere listening to nothing but the rustle of the breeze and the predictable cadence of Sam’s breathing, it was easy to forget he was in unfriendly territory.

Most things, Steve had learned, were easy to forget. Easy to forget his childhood, spent between one asthma attack and the next. Easy to forget the fights he lost because the streets where he’d spilt his blood didn’t look the same anymore. Easy to forget his Father, his Mother. It was easy to forget the man he was all set to settle for, the dreary, skinny, sick one that attended Aurburndale Art School. He had forgotten all that, how he’d convinced himself he could find a way to be happy with a simple job and an average wife. (Not that he’d had any hope of finding one, but he knew better now how hopeless he’d been then.) 

The phone between his palms buzzed, and he swiped his thumb across the screen before he lifted it to his ear. “Any movement?” he asked.

Hill was all-authority and no fun, saying: “it just ran a full flight diagnostic. We have to get her away from what’s left of the city. Pepper has been in contact with Happy.”

“Can Happy get her away?”

“At this point, Happy is our only chance at getting her isolated. We just have to come up with a believable story, one that she’d believe long enough to follow him.” (There was more to it than that, surely.)

Steve sighed, “I can’t think of anything she’d believe.” But he could, if he sat still, he could think of plenty of things. Because Tony was _curious_ above most things. He was always poking things, trying to figure out how to reduce them to pieces and then how to put them back together. “Happy can tell her he found something, a box, a suit—a piece of equipment. She’d probably come looking for it.”

Hill sighed. “That’s pretty simple, Cap.”

“Simple works,” he countered. “How long will it take the suit to reach her once she calls for it?”

“Our best guess is ten to fifteen minutes, that’s give or take ten minutes. Rhodey says that’s as accurate as you can get with untested equipment.” Hill went quiet. 

Steve looked over his shoulder at the sound of Sam moving around in the tent.

“I’ll call you with coordinates and an approximate time to meet up with Happy. Protect your face,” she said, “it’s less than two weeks before the benefit broadcast.” Then she disconnected the call without so much as a good-bye.

# B SIDE

“Sir.”

The mountain of bodies hadn’t ever talked to him before, not dead-Steve’s hand grabbed his arm, not until those words (on endless repeat): you did this. It hadn’t ever shifted, so the bodies slid and the phantom shape of an almost man sat up to look at him. The nightmare stopped, just briefly, as he tried to catch up with this new incarnation of the same old-same-old dream. 

“Jarvis?” he said.

“Captain Rogers is approaching the garage, sir.”

And he was awake, pulling himself up to sitting with a too-fast drag of breath. The garage lights turned on with the motion, flooding the space with light as bright as sunshine, leaving him with spots dancing in his vision. “That’s unpleasant,” he announced to no one, and Jarvis, (apparently used to his nonsensical mutterings) didn’t deem it necessary to reply. “Where is he?”

The answer was the sound of the door opening and a quick stall to slow footsteps, Tony was still blinking blind spots out of his vision when the door closed, and Steve was standing there dressed to leave. For a fully-grown man, one that had taken on monsters and murderers and armies of enemies, he looked comically intimidated to have been discovered. “Did you sleep down here?”

“Nodded off,” Tony assured him. It certainly hadn’t been that he woke up three hours ago, feeling as if his insides were possessed by a foreign body, with the undeniable urge to charge into the master bedroom and demand that Steve—

What? That was the bit that he couldn’t figure out. He had no idea what he wanted from Steve. That had led him to the lab, that had meandered from his desk to the garage with the intent of catching the man before he could sneak away again. Here they were, looking at one another, gauging how important it was to call out the obvious lie. 

Steve’s hand closed around the keys he was carrying. “How have you been?” was so painfully polite that the sound of it made his ears hurt.

“Great.” Tony shoved himself up to his feet. He tugged his T-shirt down and curled his toes in his socks (thinking he perhaps should have worn shoes to confront Steve) before he lifted his shoulders in a half shrug, “so you’re avoiding me.”

“I’m not—” Steve didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Instead he looked sideways at his getaway vehicles (a motorcycle, a truck, a few dozen cars it would be funny to watch him try to fit in). “It’s not you,” must have been closer to the truth.

If only there was a way to explain to the woman one universe away from them that _it wasn’t her_. (Something told Tony that it didn’t matter whether or not it was _her_ , she’d take it personally regardless. It felt personal, even to him, who didn’t have any right to take things like being avoided personally.) “My mistake.”

Steve turned his head back, expression morphing into something that might have produced a heartfelt apology, except—

“I just thought, since you talked to Pepper yesterday, and you had a midnight snack with Happy that it must be.” He paused a beat, “me. That you were avoiding.” He lifted a hand, contemplated the idea and then shrugged it off. “Why would you avoid me? It’s the,” he touched his finger to his forehead and then dropped it away, “nightmares and the,” his fingers danced in the air, “universe switching that’s making me imagine things.”

Halfway through his monologue, Steve’s regretful posture mutated into the fed-up hands on the hips pose that Tony was familiar with. It settled into a cross-armed look of condescending silence that came across on this man’s face as something almost fond, as if he’d been on the opposite end of these sorts of conversations enough times that it didn’t even annoy him anymore. “Are you finished?”

“Are you going to lie to me again?”

“It’s not a lie,” Steve objected. “It’s not _you_. It’s,” (his wife), “I just need a little time. I’ve already put too much on you, I just need to get things straight in my head before I—” There was that helpless motion of his hand again, the trail off of his voice arriving at no conclusion. 

Tony sighed. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” (hopefully), “if you were around.”

“Ok,” Steve said. His arms loosened, fell away from chest, and he sighed. “I’m going for a—run, and probably to The Diamond.”

“Don’t forget to eat,” Tony said. He dipped down to pick up the blanket he’d carried through the house with him. “I’m going back to a bed.”

# A SIDE

There was a misconception, cultivated in press rooms, reprinted in newsprint, that Tony Stark had simply decided one day that she would be a hero. They pinpointed the moment that she’d flipped the switch from war-monger to superhero. One bland face after another asked her about the cave in Afghanistan, about how she had found the strength to survive, how she had _become_ Iron Man. She’d always hated how simple they made it, how easy and careless the very idea seemed when they asked. 

It wasn’t their fault; she’d been passing out the same answer about accountability and having her eyes opened since the first man with a tape recorder asked for her story. Tony perpetuated the myth that superheroes were doubtless, fearless beings, throwing their lives away for the betterment of the world. She left out of the dark bits, and the aching parts. She left out this:

The look on Wanda’s face, caught in the center of a circle of dust-covered faces. The uneasiness of her posture as her fingers curled and uncurled at the ends of her arms, she wasn’t brave and she wasn’t a _hero_ standing there. These were the people that had grown up in her city, the ones that had been hurt by the same war that had hurt her, the ones that had their lives destroyed by the choices that she’d made.

Maybe Hydra had made promises about how they would empower her, how they would give her the strength and the opportunity to avenge her parents. Maybe their lies had been honey in Wanda’s ears, but the reality of that choice was this:

A broken road, a collection of survivors that simply couldn’t escape, and the _guilt_.

The newspapers and the magazines always asked her how she’d found the strength to survive. Tony had an honest face and a liar’s tongue, telling them everything they wanted to hear about courage and perseverance and nothing at all about Yinsen. Yinsen’s steady hands, and his uncomplicated honesty had saved her in a dark place. Survival had created the Mark 1 in the desert, but _anger_ , at the needlessness of Yinsen’s death, at his acceptance of it, at his acceptance of the death of his family, at his hopeless _courage_ had built the suit after. 

The difference between heroism and superheros was a good PR firm. 

Happy leaned in against Tony’s back, “isn’t she going to do something?”

Wanda looked across the crowd at her, right _at_ her. This is what Wanda had been promised by Hydra, to be able to help her city and her people, but it wasn’t how she’d wanted or how she’d imagined. Still, she lifted her arms. The red gathered across her palms, wiggled and squirmed between her fingers. It spread, stretched and pooled under the debris. The road groaned, the metal and wood scraped and whined before it _moved_. It appeared to lurch, burdened by its own mass and width, it barely lifted far enough to be seen, but it moved to the side and fell into the grass. When it dropped, Wanda’s shoulders dropped with it, she gasped for breath. 

There was no cheer, no scream, no clapping but a quiet that rippled through the crowd. One face turned to look at the next. The men with thick shoulders and freshly sharpened axes were looking at each other before they shrugged and nodded. The nod spread as quickly as the quiet, until they were all bobbing their heads along. 

“How long can you do that?” Artur asked.

Wanda straightened her back. “As long as I need to.”

Vision was standing out like a great sore thumb, with his bright red face and his calmly folded hands simply observing the whole. He drew a few sideward glances and he smiled as understandingly as he could. “I will help.”

Wanda looked at him with unashamed gratitude. “Thank you,” she said. “I only want to help,” she said to the others.

“Good,” Artur announced. He said nothing else, but set about picking through the debris moved off the road to pull out the metal bits. “We’ll need the vulture’s money to repair the road.” That gathered others to the mission with renewed vigor.

# A SIDE

The shield, Howard’s experimental shield, the rarest-metal-on-earth shield was leaning against the pilot’s seat in the plane. Steve had gone through the trouble of bringing it along, but he had not (yet) convinced himself that he should take it any further. No matter how long he stood still, no matter how long he looked at it, no matter how many times he reminded himself that taking the shield was good common sense, he couldn’t make his body move to pick it up.

It wasn’t the memory of her voice through a metal face, it wasn’t the continual echo of those words (do you still believe in God, Steven), it wasn’t the phantom sensation of a minor fracture that had all but completely healed before it had time to bother him. Steve had been thrown through walls, out of windows, across battlefields—he’d suffered worse injuries and worse embarrassments in his life than having the shield used as a weapon against him. 

It wasn’t the ghost of Tony (hands on her hips, staring him down with an all-knowing smile) that stood between him and the shield.

He thought, and didn’t think, it must have been Howard. It must have been the man as Steve had known him, young and bright-eyed. The Howard that was cocky and full of life, with color in his cheeks and old-fashioned mischief caught in his shiny white teeth. That was the Howard that Steve imagined when he heard the name; not the old man that he’d seen in the pictures. He didn’t imagine Howard in somber colors, staring dully out of photographs, looking as if life had taken him and twisted him up until there was nothing recognizable left. But the young Howard who had dismissed the shield as nothing but a prototype, _that_ Howard wouldn’t have bothered to stop him.

“You ok, Cap?”

Taking the shield was a _choice_ ; as deliberate as showing up to this fight wearing a flag on his chest would have been. There was a reason he hadn’t brought the uniform (and it wasn’t Natasha’s insistence about _stealth_ and Hill’s unyielding orders that he couldn’t be _discovered_ or Pepper’s quiet command that Iron Man not be photographed). The suit, and the shield, they belonged to Captain America and it wasn’t _Cap_ that had been sent. (Or it was, but it didn’t feel like it _was_.) Captain America wore his suit into battle, and war, and to what he thought was his death. But this was none of those things. 

“Steve,” Sam said.

“I’m fine,” Steve said. He looked down at the phone, at the coordinates that had just arrived and the time. Back across the Atlantic, Maria Hill must have felt it better and simpler to send him a text than making a phone call. 

(Tony is my friend.) It shouldn’t have been so hard to say, to think, to make himself believe. It shouldn’t have made him feel like a liar—he’d been friendly with Tony (when the occasion called for it), or as friendly as anyone could be with Tony. The man wasn’t unlikeable; he was just exhausting. Tony was always in motion, moving forward even when the rest of them were standing still, always thinking and rethinking and double thinking until he’d arrived at conclusions to questions they hadn’t even had time to consider.

_Of course_ there were other things in the universe, and _of course_ , they should have an idea of how they planned to defend the planet. And _of course_ , they should prepare for the sobering realization that they would not always be capable of defending Earth. (But _together_ , but in a way they agreed on, taking the time to make sure everyone understood the details.)

“You mind saying that again,” Sam asked him. He finished tightening the straps that held his suit on. “But this time make it sound convincing?” He was close enough to see the screen on the phone, just before it went black. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Steve said. Just, maybe, he should have let Natasha come instead. He should have agreed when she reminded him how she was better trained and better equipped at infiltration and stealth than he was. At how she had no problem with drugging Tony before she could call the suit and how Natasha would have been done by now, back on her way to the States with an unconscious body in the narrow cargo area of the jet.

That must not have been any more convincing. “How are we doing this?”

“I’m going to ask her nicely,” he said. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to persuade her to do the right thing.” 

Sam nodded along with the words: up, down, up, down. “And how long do we have before the suit goes from,” he motioned to his left side to indicate where it was now, “to?” his hands moved to the space between them.

“Ten to thirty minutes. Hill said they couldn’t give us any better answer. It hasn’t been tested—Rhodey looked at the blueprints, he said that she’d modified the propulsion system in a way he wasn’t familiar with. It’s not anything he’s seen Tony use before.”

“So, she’s, what? Smarter? Than our Tony?” Sam was frowning about that, “the guy’s already too smart.”

No. It wasn’t that. (All flaws aside, Tony was _smart_ , and it was hard to imagine anyone that could claim to be _smarter_.) It was a ruthlessness in her smile that Steve wouldn’t have believed (for a half second) the Tony they knew could have manifested with his whole body. There was a familiar glint to the white of her teeth, gritted in open defiance. “Maybe she just thinks differently. We don’t know what Tony was thinking when he built the suit—I think we know what this one was thinking when she modified it.”

“Oh,” Sam said, “so we’re walking into this with our eyes open. We all know that she’s going to kick your ass. She built a whole suit just to do it and she put rockets in it.” Sam’s tone was light but he wasn’t smiling. He looked out through the trees, and kept his hands busy straightening the goggles before he put them on. “I think you should bring the shield, Cap.”

“I think that’d just piss her off, Sam.”

“We might be past that point. At least, if you have the shield, you can protect your face.” He clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder in the way men did before battle, to indicate they wished you the best, and to agree without speaking, that the mission would probably fail.

# B SIDE

_You’re an idiot_ , was the very first thing Bucky had said to him. He’d been wearing a baseball cap, with scruffy cheeks and his face half hidden in careful shadows. They were strangers on a street together, Bucky managing only just anonymity to go unnoticed by folks who had moved on from the sensational story of Shield’s downfall. There were new assassins, new threats, and new problems to face. Nobody cared about an assassin who had been photographed last year, wearing all black with a silver arm, shooting explosives at cars in the middle of the day.

Steve was wearing every-day clothes, fighting off the sensation of _desperation_ that was slowly filling up his body from his toes to this eyebrows. _Yeah, well_ , he’d said back, _I kind of always have been._

That made Bucky’s lips pull up on the side, made him lift his head and look sideways at him. It was just enough to see his face. _God damn it, Steve._ But more importantly, _how did you find me?_

That was the thing, Steve had looked in his spare time, after hours, never on the Avengers’ time. He’d gone searching through the news for sightings. He scoured tip lines for any indication that Bucky had been spotted but he’d always ended up with nothing. Not even Fury, _the_ spy had been able to find any lead worthwhile enough to follow up. It was brewing itself up into a great lost cause, until Tony showed up at his door with a sheet of paper crushed in her fist to say:

_So I found him_. (And she'd had the choice to tell Steve or not. She could have done whatever she wanted to Bucky and Steve wouldn't ever have needed to know, but she hadn't. She come and she'd stood in his doorway and she'd handed him that slip of paper.)

On the side of a street, standing so close to Bucky he could smell the heat of his body, he couldn’t think of anything but how much he wanted to be able to save him. _Let me help you, Buck_.

_You can’t help me_ , sounded just like a memory, like every split second before the big-tall boy punched the kid Steve had been right in his face. There was never a good reason for the fights Steve had gotten himself into as a child. That hadn’t stopped him, and the way Bucky looked at him with regret now wasn’t going to stop him. 

“Nobody can,” Steve said, right out loud, right here in the dugout of The Diamond. He was rolling the ball between his palm and his thigh, leaning back against the faux plank boards that covered all the bits that had been built capable of absorbing lightning and (mostly) withstanding the sudden impact of a body thrown with too much enthusiasm against the side. His phone was sitting on the bench next to him, with the unnamed contact pulled up and waiting for him to work around to pressing the _call_ button.

A year and six months ago, he’d stood next to Bucky and said, _don’t make this a fight_ , and he’d known then (as sure as he knew now) that certain things had an inertia all their own. Certain actions only had one outcome, that people couldn’t change who they were, and that Bucky wasn’t going to go without fighting. 

Bucky hadn’t looked away from him as he shifted his stance, as he planned exactly how he was going to escape. He was working out what he thought he knew about Steve and how to use that against him. That must have been why he didn’t see the woman walk up behind him, why he didn’t feel the danger at his back until the needle was plunged into his neck. It was why his eyes were wide with shock as his knees gave out and Steve caught his body as it fell, whispering something like, _I’m sorry_.

Natasha cocked an eyebrow up at him, flipped the syringe around so it was out of view and said, _you have no survival instinct, Rogers_. 

He must not have, because Steve was back in Malibu a week later, standing in front of Tony doing her best impression of civility saying something stupid like, _he’s my friend. I have to help him_. 

There were tears in her eyes but there was no pain in her voice. She said, _yeah I know_. 

Steve didn’t tell her that he was sorry (but he was), he didn’t try to make it easier for her (because it never would be, because it was ugly, and complicated, and awful), but he said, _I love you_ , because he _did_.

_Yeah,_ she said, _I know_.

# A SIDE

“This is good.” It was a strange thing for Happy to say. Strange to hear to the side of a disaster clean up, to be spoken by a man that was as red as a beet, covered with sweat so thick it had puddled into mud on his neck and all around his mouth. It was a punctuation to the sound of hopeful voices, a perfect addition to the almost laughs shared back and forth between the people carrying wreckage to the pit. “Isn’t it?”

Tony’s hands were burning, the bandages were soaked with blood all over again, there was mud in every dip and bend of her body. She was sixteen steps past _exhausted_ and rendered delightfully, _amazingly_ useless by Vision, Wanda and the survivors of the Sokovia disaster. “It’s very good.” It just didn’t _feel_ good. There was no accomplishment for her, and that was _selfish_ when she’d come here hoping to find a purpose at the expense of the suffering of others. It stayed though, right there in her chest, a crouching, selfish little beast that never slept. 

Happy smiled at her like he understood. “Good for Wanda too,” he said. 

Tony rubbed her arm across her forehead in an attempt to wipe away the mud and felt it smear instead. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“I slept last night.”

Tony snorted. “I meant well, you always start repeating yourself when you don’t sleep well—”

“I’m not repeating myself—”

“This is good? This is good for Wanda? Tell me how those are two separate statements?”

“This is good,” Happy repeated as he spread his arms around to indicate the debris cleared to the sides, and the people that were sorting it. “And this is good for Wanda,” he pointed up the road at where she was digging car parts out of the shattered road. Vision was pushing the chunks of pavement back into place, working to make the road as passable as possible. “Those are two different ideas—”

“I think you’re protesting too much for an innocen—”

“Tony,” was a whispered shout, cutting into what she was going to say. Happy’s hand curled around her wrist just above the glove she was wearing. “When’s the last time you slept?”

A few days, a couple of weeks, twelve days exactly. Since the night she’d fallen asleep with her husband and woken up alone in New York. Tony twisted her hand and pulled it free from his grasp. “I sleep fine.”

Happy looked like he wanted to shake her. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen that look cross his face, the edge of desperate just barely covered by the pretense of their employer-employee relationship. (Not that they’d done a very good job maintaining that over the years. Happy was doing all the work maintaining a professional boundary while following her around like a loyal bulldog, barking at anyone that got close enough to cause a problem.) It lingered, didn’t fade, but Happy wasn’t going to call her a liar. Instead, he said, “I was taking a moment,” (but not a break), “and I heard the guy, you know the one that comes from,” Happy pointed in the direction of where he thought the houses in the country were, “he was saying some kid was telling everyone they found a ul—you know who.”

“Voldemort?” Tony said.

Happy frowned at her.

“Fine,” she sighed, “so you overheard a guy talking about a kid who was telling someone that there’s hunks of metal in the forest?”

“I don’t appreciate the tone,” Happy said. 

“There’s no tone.”

“There’s a tone,” Happy objected, “I thought you would be interested. I wasn’t going to tell you at first because I thought you’d do this, but then you look,” he looked directly at her face, “sad,” and then away, “so I thought you might want the distraction. That’s okay.”

Tony sighed, let her head fall back so the wind blew through her hair and across the tacky sweat on her throat. She closed her eyes, let the sensation of exhaustion roll through her whole body as Happy kept on and on talking without end, and then she tipped her head forward again, “fine,” she said, “we’ll go. If that’ll make you happy. If that will make you stop _talking_.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Happy said back. 

“Happy,” was as close to interested as she could fake, “please, lets go get lost in the forest together. It’ll be great.”

“I don’t appreciate being mocked,” Happy said, but he pulled his gloves off, “but, if you really want to go?”

She tugged her gloves off too, folded them over and shoved them into her back pocket. She ignored his outraged face looking at the bandages and the pink stains on her hands. “I really do, Happy. Come on.”

# B SIDE

Tony woke up with the headache, as hot as sunburn, as tight as a vice. The nightmare was an unknowable thing on the other side of his consciousness. The details were foggy, half-remembered, getting easy to forget every second that he was awake. 

What a bunch of seconds they were, a startled shout, the sound of Jarvis coming to life (a little lull in white noise and then the sudden appearance of a voice saying): “should I call for Ms. Potts, sir?”

Tony’s hands were in fists, clutching at the blankets he only half-remembered covering up with. The headache made it hard to keep his eyes open. He could hear a thunder of footfalls on steps, but he was too busy fighting to get his legs free from the blankets. “No, tell me where Steve is,” he said. There was sweat as thick as mayonnaise on his face, soaked into his shirt and slicking up the spaces between his fingers. “Jarvis.”

“I am scanning social media, sir.” 

The door was pulled open in time with Tony getting one foot free from the blankets. He only barely managed to pull the other leg out before Happy was standing there all red in the face and saying, “it’s back. It’s bad.”

“It’s not great for me either,” Tony assured him. “What is bad? What kind of bad, I can’t—I can’t concentrate. I can’t _think_.” He couldn’t coordinate his limbs into a uniform motion. His arm was going left toward his phone and his hand was going south toward the rolled-up leg of his pants. One of his knees was trying to stand up while one of his ankles was remembering how to push his foot flat against the floor. Happy’s two great palms shoving down against his shoulders, pushing him back into place on the bed was the only thing that kept Tony from landing on his face on the floor.

“ _Bad_ , bad.” Happy was a genius in a simpleton’s body, a philosopher in the flesh of a peon; a man of few (worthwhile) words, Happy never once failed to make his entire meaning known. 

“Shit.” Tony let his head hang forward, pressed the heels of his hands against his temples and found it did nothing but make the tightness twist a bit more. His stomach was flip-flopping in his gut, churning up in a way he couldn’t swear it had bothered ever since he was new to the phenomenon of hangovers. “Let me,” he said, “let me—move your hands, let me think.”

“I don’t like this,” Happy said.

They had to find Steve. _He_ had to find Steve.

“What’s going on?” Pepper demanded. She was standing on her toes, not wearing her heels, with her slim skirt pulled up her thighs so she could run up the stairs. Her hair was in disarray (and Pepper was never more beautiful or more dangerous than when her hair was in disarray). “What’s wrong with you?” Her hands were blessedly cool against his overheated face, her body was deceptively close, offering him a familiar comfort he couldn’t wrap his arms around. “Are you sick? I expect an answer.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Happy offered.

Tony groaned, got to his feet. That was a brand new sort of agony, the interior of his skull gave it’s best impression of a can-crushing machine. “Is there Tylenol in the bathroom?” There always had been before, it was just a matter of getting his eyes open long enough to find it. Or a matter of Pepper’s arm reaching around him to pluck the bottle out of the cabinet, a shake of pills being dispensed and the luke-warm water straight from the tap to help them go down. He rested his forehead against the edge of the table, breathed in and breathed out.

“You can _feel_ the other universe?” 

“I think,” Happy said. “This is bad,” was directed at Tony. “I don’t like it.”

Tony stood up straight, grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it over his head. “Jarvis, where is he?”

“Who?” Pepper demanded.

“There is a ninety-five percent chance Captain Rogers is currently at The Diamond, sir.”

A fresh shirt felt lovely against his sticky skin, he kicked the sleeping pants off and found the jeans he’d been wearing yesterday. They slid on with little resistance, catching only around his thighs before he yanked them up. “Pepper,” he looked up at her, got his vision to focus long enough to see her shock, and her worry, and her anger, “I’ll explain when I get back. I have to go find Steve.”

“I’ll drive you,” Happy said.

_No._ “I got it,” Tony said. “I’ll call you. It’ll be fine. I just—” It was easier to leave that sentence unfinished, to go down toward the garage, and the cars, and therefore closer to Steve, than it was to stay and try to explain something he couldn’t _exactly_ understand himself.

# A SIDE

“Happy, there’s no harm in admitting that you don’t know where we’re going—the first step in solving a problem is admitting it exists.”

“It’s just a little farther, I heard him say the kids saw it in a copse of trees.”

“A copse?”

“Yeah, you know, a circle of trees?”

“Happy,” was the very last thing Tony said before she stepped around the last tree that stood between her and Steve. Her mouth was almost a smile, caught up in trying to convey exasperation and amusement. Her clothes were so thickly coated in dirt they had turned stiff and brown. She saw him immediately, and her hands formed into fists. “You son of a bitch.”

“I’m not here to fight,” Steve said. But he was here, in the middle of the woods, as far away from line of sight and sound as they could get. Here with nothing but a tight blue shirt and a pair of khakis. Here with his palms lifted up in surrendered before they could even start. 

Tony looked sideways at Happy. He stepped backward, looked sorry and embarrassed. “It doesn’t have to be a fight,” he said, “nobody wants to fight you. It’s just time to go home.”

Rhodey couldn’t figure out, and Steve didn’t know, and Pepper couldn’t see on hours of videos from the lab, exactly what gesture called for the suit. There was no telling if the trackers in her arm had already called for it, if the system would relay the information to Pepper, to Hill, to him in time for him to prepare for it. He started counting the moment she saw his face, seconds to minutes. 

“If you didn’t want a fight why did you lie to me?” she asked. Her arms lifted up to cross over her chest, she said, “tell me that, Hogan. Tell me why you brought me out to the middle of the forest if you didn’t want a fight—what,” she turned her head to look at him. “You’re too good to walk into Sokovia?”

“Come on, Tony,” he said. “How would that look? I can’t just show up here.”

Her hand motioned at his entire body, case-in-point to the opposite.

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“You keep saying that.”

“This isn’t about you. This is about Tony, about _our_ Tony.” Steve paused, watched her face (counted ten-and-fifteen-and-twenty seconds away from an unknown total). “I can’t let you use the suit.”

Tony smiled, her head was shaking back-and-forth and back-and-forth. “You know, Rogers. I read the articles, about that interview you did at a coffee shop. I got to say, it made a good headline, it was exactly the kind of thing people like to read. It’s precisely the lie that the good people of America need someone to tell them, but you’re forgetting Rogers.” She stepped sideways, farther away from the tree, closer to him. There was nothing but space around her now. “I’m not him. And you're not nearly man enough to stop me.”

“I meant what I said,” Steve said.

Sam, in his ear, was whispering, “ _we’ve got confirmation, the suit is moving._ ”

“You’re not his friend, Steven. You’d give up anything for your fucking friend. That’s funny, too, because if you weren’t a dick, if you’d ever asked, if you’d managed to think,” every word was _venom_ , “he would have found Bucky for you. I found Bucky.”

Steve dropped his arms, looked over at Happy, “you should go,” he said. “I can take it from here.”

“How did you think this would go?” Tony was shrugging out of the long sleeve shirt. It dropped into the leaves like damp cardboard. Her arms were bare and dust covered, she pulled the cap off the arc reactor and threw it to the side. 

“I thought it would go like this,” Steve agreed. Just, “it doesn’t have to. I’m not here for a fight. You keep saying that you want to protect him, that’s all I want. We just want to know that the suit isn’t going to be used, that we can trust you.” He flexed his hands into fists, “just, come back to New York with me, we’ll help you figure out how to get home. That’s what you want isn’t it?”

“You really are just like him,” She said. She lifted her right arm over her head, he almost heard the faint whistling sound just before the impact of metal on flesh. The gauntlet folded around her hand in slow motion; time simply stopped as the other pieces came. Her body rocked forward when they landed but she didn’t stop looking at him, right _at_ him as the suit wrapped her up.

# B SIDE

The baseball should have hit Tony. The only thing that kept it from (probably, or nearly) killing him was how it ripped apart at the stitches. It exploded like confetti less than a foot from Tony’s chest. That didn’t give him enough time to process that it hadn’t struck, that there was any sense of relief, just enough time to blurt out, “Tony!” It was enough time to throw the bat, to cross the space between them, to grab Tony by the arms.

Tony said, “calm down, Cap, I’m fine.”

A ball hit the cage behind home base with a crack loud enough to echo through the empty diamond. Steve should have let go but his fingers were confused about how nothing had happened, about how they had finally found their way to Tony and he was trying to talk them down. Another ball hit the cage.

“Maybe turn that off?” Tony suggested.

“Why are you here?” Steve turned his head to tell the machine to stop and it whirred to a stop. He managed to unclasp one hand before Tony stared down at the right hand that still hadn’t managed to let go. “You could have gotten hurt.”

“You said you weren’t hiding from me,” Tony said.

“I’m not.” It was true, depending on one’s perception of the truth. He wasn’t hiding from Tony; he just didn’t want to be at the same place Tony was _at the moment_. Possibly because of how embarrassing it was to have his hands refuse to follow directions. 

Tony pushed against his wrist until he let go. “You regularly spend hours exploding baseballs?” Tony’s hands slid down into pockets, he kicked a scrap of the ball away from his foot and looked back up at him. 

There wasn’t a lot about this man that was physically the same as the woman he married. Not identical, he had broader shoulders, thicker arms, slimmer hips—more facial hair, pinker lips, but the eyes were the same. They were exactly the same, the way they expressed amusement, the tilt of his face, always angling for condescension but almost always falling just short. Steve’s hands rested on his hips, “that’s why she built the place. Why are you here, Tony?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “I woke up—with this headache. The worst headache I’ve ever had. I scared Pepper—” his hand pulled free from his pocket to point back toward the house. “I broke the speed limit, I don’t know. I have no idea why I’m here.” He sighed. “Here doesn’t exist where I’m from.”

“The Diamond?” No. Not the diamond, not the literal diamond, but the idea of it. The closeness of space between them, the inexplicable desire to see one another. It didn’t exist where Tony was from because they weren’t even friends there. “Right,” Steve said.

“Probably my fault,” Tony said.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Pretend.”

Tony was quiet, hands in his pockets, standing still, just staring at him. “I wasn’t pretending, Steve. You hate me. That’s not fair,” he looked sideways, “hate would imply that you care, you couldn’t display your apathy toward me any clearer. I am there or not, it doesn’t matter to you. I’m an annoyance or a convenience, and some days probably both.” He shrugged, “I’ve given him reasons.”

Steve just didn’t have the _patience_. “Look,” (but they had to try, even when they’d rather not, they had to _try_ ), “I don’t know everything, but I do know Tony Stark and you’re annoying. You can be a real pain in my ass, but I’ve never hated you. If he does, or if he _doesn’t_ care, it’s because he never took the time to try.”

“You don’t know me, Cap.”

“Fine.” There was no point in arguing unwinnable arguments, “but I know its his loss.” 

His water was in the dugout, sitting next to the phone he still hadn’t managed to dial. He’d have to get the rake out of the little closet built into the end, clean up all the bits of the balls he’d destroyed before he left. He ducked down to pick up the water, and the phone, and closed his eyes at the sound of Tony following right behind him. “If I say I was avoiding you, would you go away?”

“I don’t think so.” Tony shrugged, "maybe. I don't know why I'm here."

Steve sighed, turned around and sat on the bench. It gave him a splendid view of Tony leaning against the doorway of the dugout. A perfect view of how uneasy the man was to be caught in close quarters with him. “What could you have done?”

“What?”

“What could you have done to him that he would hate you?” 

Tony shrugged. “I make a lot of jokes about him.” He shifted his weight, so he was leaning against the opposite door jam, looked out at the field. “I may have said he was nothing without Erskine’s formula.”

Steve snorted, “you and seven thousand other people.”

“I cause problems,” Tony said.

Yes, well, they were champions of causing problems for one another. It wasn’t a matter of the problem causing but the problem resolving. He took a drink of the mid-day-warm-water, let it wash down his throat, and leaned his head back against the plank boards. “Big problems? Insurmountable problems?”

“Kind of big problems,” Tony said. He picked at the paint on the doorjamb, wiped it against his jeans. “Planet killing robot problems.”

Steve had forgotten about that. He looked over at Tony without moving, considered what he wanted to say. He didn’t know all the facts, but he knew Tony (even if she had taken on this new shape) well enough to know that she wouldn’t have purposefully created a planet killing robot. She wouldn’t have let it go either, it would have sat on her shoulders until she died, whispering into her ear every time she touched anything new. 

(Remember what you did.)

“Not that kind of problem,” Steve said. He leaned forward, “I mean, my best friend killed your parents, but I still want to save him from himself kind of problems.” It wasn’t something they talked about very often, or at length. It came up after dark, when the world had settled into something almost ugly, and they were both beaten raw by the relentlessness of moving forward. They were at odds, her anger and her grief and his apologetic loyalty to Bucky. “I think if you can forgive that—”

“ _My_ parents?” Tony said.

Steve looked up.

Tony was bristled up like an angry cat, eyes narrowed as he stared down at him. “Rogers, my parents died in a car wreck.” There was a question mark on the end of that statement, an implied _tell me I’m right_ that was left hanging. “My parents died in a car wreck,” Tony repeated. “My parents—”

“Tony, I’m sorry.”

“ _Died_ in a _car wreck_.” 

Steve stood up, lifted his hands up in surrender, or in condolence, took a step forward as Tony took a step backward, up and out of the dugout. Tony was thinking, it was like a teleprompter of static crossing his face, a great wealth of half-realized things he’d seen and ignored. Steve had watched her work often enough he knew the face and he knew that there was nothing good at the end. “I didn’t know he didn’t tell you,” Steve said. “I’m sorry. I thought you would have known—you asked about Hydra and I assumed—”

“How?” Tony snapped.

“You don’t wan—”

“Don’t tell me what I want, Rogers!” Tony shouted at him. “Tell me how your _best friend_ killed my parents.”

Steve had hardly made it through telling her the first time, barely managed to choke out the truth as fairly as he could. He’d barely made it through the guilt of it, and here he was again, squaring his shoulders up. “Howard was beaten to death, he died of massive bleeding in his brain. Your Mom,” Steve cleared his throat, “she was strangled. I’m sorry, Tony.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tony said. His hands were fists and Steve saw him move in plenty of time to avoid getting hit; he had enough time to duck and he didn’t. He stood still, he let Tony hit him, and he thought it was maybe worth something in the long run. Maybe since he couldn’t do it for her, because she hadn’t hit him or even tried.

# A SIDE

There was a great deal of noise. 

That was the thing that nobody understood about the suit, it was _loud_. Surrounding oneself with metal, gears and switches and circuits was deafening. The light from the heads-up display was blinding. The world was separated by a digital screen projected a few millimeters from the end of her nose. 

_Everything_ was immediate inside the suit. 

The ricochet of bullets was deafening, the impact of them was breath-taking. The grind of Steven’s fingers trying to dig into the weak points at the joints of the suit was infuriating. Tony said,

“Friday, do something about Sam.”

“Sam!” Steve shouted. It was a strangled sound, all tight and red and wet. It must have been hard to shout with a knee on your chest. It must have been difficult to shout when you were flat on your back on the forest floor. It must have been. “Get back.”

The bullets were back, beating against her back. Tony shoved herself back to her feet. “Friday,” she said again. “I put darts in the suit for this reason.” She lifted her arm and the target program zeroed in on Sam swooping down out of the tree he’d been hiding in. 

The dart hit, Sam said, “you bitch,” just before his body went limp and he landed face-first in the underbrush. Behind her, Steve was crawling back up to his feet, lifting his pink-bruised fists into the air with blood coming out of his fat lip, looking at her with his all-American-defiance. There was the boy that had lied his way straight into the army, who had disobeyed every order he didn’t agree with. 

“You should have brought the shield, Steven.” She spread her arms, “I brought my suit.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve rubbed the blood off his face with the back of his hand, “this isn’t Captain America’s fight, is it?”

“I guess not,” Tony said. She hit him again and it felt _good_ , like a bitter relief from the infinite shitstorm of this awful world. It felt _right_ , it felt _just_. It felt a bit like coming home. Just enough, just close enough to count, enough to stop the static in her ears, enough to make the silence _bearable_ again. “Come on, Steven,” she hissed. Her hand wrapped up in his shirt, dragged him back up to his unsteady feet. 

There were his fists again, just as pink as before, smeared with his own blood. There was his stare, refusing to give in, refusing to fight back, just standing in place and letting the bullies hit him.

(Steve had told her that once, how he knew he wasn’t ever going to win a fight. How he’d walked face-first into every beating he’d ever taken, and he’d always known it was hopeless. It just didn’t matter much to Steve God-damn Rogers. It was the _principle_ that mattered.)

His hands scratched at the elbow joint of her suit, digging weakly into the metal as his body wavered in place, barely managing to stay upright. His face was puffy, his eyes were bloody, he was frowning at her. “What,” he slurred, “get tired?”

“Oh, you stupid son of a bitch,” she gasped. Her hand uncurled from his shirt and he dropped. The suit dropped with him, falling back into pieces on the forest floor, she went with it, dropping to her knees to grab him by the face, “damn it, Steven.”

“Get away from him.” 

Tony looked up at Natasha, at the blue-glow of the Black Window Bite. “He didn’t fight back,” she said. “I—”

“Take your hand off him,” Natasha said. Because the bites were picky about who they electrocuted. Tony’s fingers didn’t move from Steve’s face, his hand pushed against her stomach, trying and failing to shove her out of the way. Maybe she could have called the suit back to her, maybe it would have been quicker than the bite, but—

“He was supposed to fight back,” Tony said.

“You were supposed to come quietly,” Natasha said. She took another step forward, “you really going to make me do this?” 

“Don’t forget Happy,” Tony said. She pulled her fingers off Steve’s face and there was only enough time to anticipate the bite before it hit. The pain was hot, metal and it swallowed her whole.

# B SIDE

Tony didn’t want to stop and he didn’t want to continue. Somewhere in the center of the hurricane of things, he thought it was silly (really). His fists weren’t that impressive. Without the weight and the heft of the suit he wasn’t doing much more than annoying Steve, and to what end? 

It was gut reaction, it was hurt, it was his _Mother_. It had always been his Mother, always been her voice and the soft touch of her hands. The way she kissed his temple when she thought he was sleeping. Her singing that had followed him from the beginning to the end. 

But he didn’t remember it how he used to. He remembered remembering her voice. Because he’d _lost_ her, because she’d followed his father into that car, because Howard hadn’t been smart enough or fast enough or alert enough to protect her. Tony had _lost_ her because of a car accident, because of an act of God, because of just bad luck. 

She had deserved better than Howard, better than Tony, better than to get lost the way she had—

No. No, she hadn’t been _lost_ , she’d been _taken_. She’d been _murdered_. She’d died _alone_ , and _scared_ because Howard hadn’t protected her. (Because Tony hadn’t, because Tony was years and years away from being the sort of man that protected anyone but himself.)

“Tony,” Steve gasped between getting punched in the face (again) and reaching forward to grab him around the chest. Steve crushed him, held him still in the center of the rage of noise and _things_ , the cacophony of little untruths, and lies, and the remembered memory of his Mother’s singing being slowly choked into silence. “I’m so sorry, Tony,” Steve said.

Steve’s clothes were loose enough to wind his hands into, his body was sturdy enough to lean into, big enough to press his face against, warm enough to find comfort in. Held too tightly to fight, Tony gave up. It took him like a tide.


	15. Chapter 15

# B SIDE

There must have been a period of time between The Diamond and _here_. Tony could remember it in bits and pieces. How Steve had been as immovable as a wall. The sound of the truck tires on the road and the vibration of the vehicle in motion passing through the window his head was leaning against. 

Tony remembered the stillness of the house itself, as if it and all its inhabitants and all at once become aware of the need for mourning. Malibu had survived its share of setbacks, and shocks, and struggles. (It hadn’t survived the last one; but it hadn’t been built to survive war like that.) He’d almost died in this house (more than once) but it had never settled like this: like a sagging old man, sitting off-center to a funeral, contemplating how inevitably close death truly was. 

Pepper must have evaporated and taken Happy along with her. (But how? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t remember Steve making phone calls.)

There had been food; tragedy demanded food. That was funny, or it would be sooner or later. It would be a tasty, useful treat to chew over next month or the one after: to know that Steve Rogers fell victim to the same stupid urge to provide food for the surviving relatives. 

Rhodey had done it for days after Tony’s parents’ died. He’d shown up with every food he could think of, always pushing it within grabbing distance in case Tony ever found himself experiencing hunger. Obadiah had always shown up with a pizza or hamburgers, or anything that could be ordered and delivered hot. His dry palm slid across Tony’s drooping back as he whispered mozzarella-scented apologies into his ear. As he made promises about how he’d look after things, and he’d assured him that Howard was proud.

(Fuck Howard; a failure of a father and a husband. A great man that couldn’t protect his family.)

Steve made him pancakes, and he didn’t seem offended when Tony didn’t eat. He’d traded the hot food for a cold drink and—

What? 

What had happened after that? The kitchen faded out and no memory took its place. No memory of how he’d come to be upstairs, how he’d crawled into this bed, how long he’d laid here. No memory of hours passed, the sky going dark, the gentle-predictable sound of breathing accompanying him.

“Is there a purpose to you sitting in here?” Tony asked. 

Even in the perfect darkness of the room, Steve couldn’t hide. He shifted where he was sitting, back against the glass and hands in his lap. Tony imagined he was leaning his head back, imagined he was working through half-the-same things. Because _this_ Steve _cared_. Because _this_ one had known and he had _told_ , and he hadn’t stood by a pile of logs, looking haughty and hard-headed, saying things like _sometimes my team mates don’t tell me things_.

“Honestly,” Steve said. “I don’t know.”

“How long are you going to sit there trying to figure it out?” Tony didn’t want to think of Steve, the other one, the one that belonged to him the way this one belonged to _her_. He didn’t want to think of Steve because he’d think of Steve’s _best friend_ , the brain-washed assassin that had strangled his Mother. 

And Tony didn’t _want_ , not for a single fucking minute, to think of his Mother alone and scared—

(knowing she was going to die, and knowing no amount of struggle, no amount of crying, no amount of praying could save her.)

“As long as it takes, I guess,” Steve said. He shifted again, maybe stretched, maybe leaned, maybe sat up straighter. Then he was quiet, nothing more the sound of breath in a dark room.

# A SIDE

The first sensation, filtered through a thick smog of near-consciousness, was the distinct feeling of having been displaced. Everything had shifted just slightly to one side. It went beyond how her shirt was pulled sharply across her chest, twisted up until the collar up felt like it was making a solid attempt to strangle her. It wasn’t limited to her bare feet, her inside out pockets, or the unyielding hardness of the floor beneath her face. 

No, this feeling was everything: the taste of the air, the unfeeling cold tips of her fingers she meant to flex and couldn’t quite wake up enough to manage. It was primal, the feeling of having been picked up, manhandled and dropped into an unfamiliar cage. It was the sudden imposition of walls that created a small universe inside a larger one. 

That was what the air tasted like, that’s what the shirt twisted around her neck felt like, that’s what the bubbled-up electrical burn on her shoulder hurt like: _captivity_.

Tony opened her eyes, but she didn’t need to bother to know what she’d find. The smoothness of four walls, left gray and bare by the men (or the suits, really) who had poured the concrete. The little red wink of a camera in the corner promising her that she was being observed, but not necessarily by the obvious camera pointed at her prone body. There was no surprise to finding that she’d been searched, that she’d been carried and dropped here.

Natasha had _always_ been as fiercely loyal as the situation demanded. Back home, that meant the comforting knowledge that there was an intelligent, well-trained, readily capable and fully willing assassin that wouldn’t stop until she’d saved or avenged any member of the team. Back home, it meant that Tony never needed to worry too much about finding herself face-down in a jail cell because concrete walls were as thin as paper to Natasha god damn Romanoff. 

Here, Natasha’s loyalty was cold. It was a door set so perfectly into the wall that Tony couldn’t definitely say it even existed. Here, it was the built-in bed that they’d dropped her just short of, the stack of blankets and a nice little pillow that was piled on top of a mattress that they couldn’t be bothered to lay her on. 

Here, it was the clink of metal links pulled sharply when Tony sat up, when she tried to move her arms. The laugh wasn’t _funny_ , but it burst out of her mouth regardless, crackling and popping across her tongue as her sore body sagged back. The arc reactor was glowing blue in the soupy gray light of the cell. “The cuffs are just petty,” she said. 

Tony took a minute, let her head fall forward and just concentrated on breathing. Just concentrated on taking stock of the state of her body. With the exception of the burn from the black widow bite, the stiffness and the lingering pain from the convulsions it inevitably had caused, and the unpleasant taste in her mouth: there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. 

“Ok,” she whispered to herself. The cuffs were tight on her wrists, but the links were long enough she could lift herself over her hands and pull her legs through so her arms were in front of her instead of behind. That took some of the pressure off her shoulders, let her fix her filthy shirt and lean back against the concrete bed. 

Tony leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and took a few breaths to put off the slow-building panic in her chest. It vibrated in a funny way, off-set to the arc reactor flickering. She didn’t think about it _often_ , but sometimes, that there was still a cluster of shrapnel in her chest just waiting for a good time to kill her. (Steve worried about it for her, constantly off-center to her, arguing about unnecessary risks. Oh boy, oh _boy_ , Steve wasn’t going to like hearing about _this_.) When she did think about it, it became all she could think about. Every beat of her heart lasted an hour, every minute movement of her body was an earthquake, every flicker of the arc reactor was a sign of her imminent death.

With her eyes closed, she could be anywhere. She didn’t have to be _here_ , with her sore legs crossed in front of her, with her lax, half-numb hands laying in her lap. She didn’t have to be sitting on this cold concrete, she didn’t have to be convincing herself this wasn’t how she died. She could be anywhere:

A beach.  
A bed.  
A blanket on a beach, listening to the waves rolling up the sand, absorbing the sun until her body felt warm and still. She could be listening to Steve read, listen to him repeating the lines he liked, again and again. The nearness of him was just far enough away she couldn’t touch, but she could hear, and she could feel, and she could be at peace. 

With her eyes closed, she didn’t have to be _here_. Still, it could have been worse. Roles reversed, Tony walking up to find Natasha kneeling over Steve unconscious on the ground with blood slicked across the whole of his face—well, that would have ended very differently.

# B SIDE

“Why?” Tony asked.

His voice came out of the darkness, as alert now as he’d been an hour ago the last time he’d spoken. The lights were turned off for the benefit of anonymity. The room was left dark to protect (someone, maybe Steve, maybe Tony, maybe each of them from the other). Steve could almost make out how his hand lifted up from where it had been resting on his chest, how it motioned fruitlessly in the air, “I mean, why did he kill them? Why _then_?”

This was hell far worse than a nightmare, far worse than waking up without his wife, far worse than waking up seventy years after he’d thought he’d died, worse than sitting at Peggy’s bedside, seeing recognition flicker and fade, watching the woman who had been strong, fearless, and unstoppable be lost inside her own body. Steve’s fingers were fiddling with his shoe laces, trying to find something to do to take the edge off the sensation of being smothered. “Things might not be the same in your universe, Tony.” But, “I’ll tell you everything I know, but—that doesn’t mean it’s what happened.”

“We went to the same boarding school. She has the same family photographs. We were kidnapped on exactly the same day, by exactly the same people, we were rescued on exactly the same day. We had sex with the same people, the same amount of times. Everything that happened in our lives before we said, _I am Iron Man_ , is exactly the same except that I’m a man and she’s a woman.” And therefore, what had happened to Tony’s parents, having happened before the press conference, had to have happened exactly the same. “Did she know?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

“Because you told her.”

Steve sighed, rubbed his thumb against his eyebrow to try to soothe the ache away. It did nothing to help—his head didn’t hurt, it just remembered a very long time ago, how it felt to have headaches. “Yes,” he said.

Tony sighed. “Before she married you?”

“Yes.”

That made Tony laugh, bitter, quiet and breathy. It made his head rustle against the pillows, made his voice raw and rough, “why were they killed?”

“Howard was transporting super serum. The Winter Soldier was supposed to retrieve it.”

Tony sat up and the lights flickered on, growing in steady intensity until the whole room was ruthlessly illuminated, just so Steve could see this happen again. Just so he could watch Tony realize that his Mother should have been alive, that she had only died because of a stupid choice, because of a lack of forethought, because she was standing too close to something valuable enough to kill over. “The Winter Soldier,” Tony repeated.

“Yes.”

Tony looked up, eyes closed, and mouth closed. His cheeks were pink beneath the scruff, his eyes were wet where they were closed, and when he opened them again, he said, “does he remember them?”

Steve sighed, “yes.” There was more to say, about how it hadn’t really been Bucky. About how they had tortured him, programmed him, used him as their weapon and when he misbehaved they tortured him again. Steve had refined the Bucky Barnes defense, he could lay it out in ten minutes or less. But it was useless here, when the pain was raw like this.

Tony leaned back against the headboard. “What kind of magical penis do you have, Rogers? I’m not the marrying type, but— I wouldn’t have married you, not knowing you’re taking his side.”

“We actually hadn’t had sex yet when this happened,” he said.

Tony snorted, almost laughed, looked over at him with exhaustion making his whole body appear to struggle just to stay upright. “I just, really hate looking at your face sometimes.”

“She said the same thing.” In fact, she’d said it more than once, at least once a month, for quite a long time. At the end of it, when she’d talked him right out of his clothes, she had him wrapped up in her legs and arms and she’d kissed him just like an echo of those words, but she’d said, _I didn’t want to love you_. “I think it’s my chin.”

Tony laughed. “Could be,” he said. 

“You should try to sleep,” Steve said.

“And you’re just going to sit there?”

Of course, he was. Just long enough to figure out how to fix what he’d done, just long enough for the stinging sensation of guilt to fade. Long enough he could be certain he hadn’t done too much harm. (Or maybe longer, he couldn’t tell exactly.) Steve nodded because there weren’t words to explain his intentions, and Tony nodded back before he laid back down.

# A SIDE

Natasha had been kind enough to leave her clean clothes; she’d been shrewd enough to make sure they were a prisoner’s clothes. The room was chilly enough to make the long sleeve undershirt seem ideal, but Tony was still coated in dirt so thick it billowed off her clothes as dust when she walked. (You’d think, while they were going through the trouble of throwing her around, they might have accidentally knocked a bit of it loose. It would have been like beating a carpet to clean it.) 

Time was an inconstant in a room with no clocks and no windows. It was an effective, somewhat over looked method of torture. (No matter how many times she looked at her wrist, no watch appeared.) Almost as effective as offering clothes that Tony didn’t want to put on over her filthy skin and leaving bottles of water that could have contained anything. Natasha was a genius, using the distrust between them like a weapon.

(And why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she use every advantage she had against an unknown enemy. Because that’s what they were here. Tony had attacked, and Natasha had saved Steve. The line in the sand had never been more clear, and now she stood opposite a woman that she wouldn’t have liked to face off against under perfect circumstances.)

The door opened after ten or twenty or thirty or ninety minutes. It came loose with a great dissonant ringing of moving parts. All the noise of the world beyond flooded through, all at once: a great growling beast. It had a thousand heads, and each of them were screaming. She hadn’t realized before (that moment) how quiet the room she’d woken up was, how silent, how the loudest thing was her own breathing until suddenly it was boots on concrete and voices, and music and grinding gears and—

Natasha, standing there with one hand on the half-open door and the other resting on her hip. Her wrists were glowing blue like an echo of the electrical burn on Tony’s shoulder. “Come on,” Natasha said, “you need a shower.”

“As far as pick up lines, I’ve heard better.”

Natasha’s pretty lips parted to show her teeth. “I’m sure you have, Ms. Stark. If you don’t want to follow me to the showers, I’ll bring you a bucket and a bar of soap.”

Tony had questions. (About Happy, about Steve, about location, about intent, about many things.) She had no advantages, and nothing to gain by digging in now. Instead she shrugged her shoulders and picked up the clothes they’d left for her. “Lead the way,” she said.

The showers were a humiliating set up of white tile and shower heads. There were no visible cameras, but a desk, a chair and Natasha looking very bored as she took a seat. “The water’s hot,” she said as she crossed one leg over the other, looking decidedly disinterested in this aggressive invasion of privacy. 

Tony dropped the clothes on the desk, and lifted her hands up so the links of the chain were pulled taut. She arched her eyebrow at Natasha without saying a word, concentrating fully on communicating, _take these off_ as if they were equals and _friends_.

Natasha pulled a key out of what must have passed for a pocket in the Black Widow costume, wrapped her whole fist around the chain and pulled it down and forward so Tony’s leg hit the edge of the desk and she had to bend with the motion or fall over. Their faces were inches apart, close enough that Tony could smell Natasha’s conditioner still lingering in her hair. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

What felt like a thousand years ago, in a different world, Tony’s Mother had held her hand in a talon-tight grip on the side of roads. She’d curved her body around Tony in places with too many men moving too quickly around them. In a different world, when Tony was nothing but a pretty pawn in a greater game, Mother had never faltered in wrapping her up in warm arms. No danger had ever come close enough to Tony to make her feel (not even for a moment, not for one single moment) afraid.

Tony had taken away her own safety (or it felt that way, in all the years since, it felt like it all started) when she built the engine. The circuit board she’d built at four hadn’t been an astounding success, it had barely registered on the Howard Stark Scale of Success, but the _engine_ had caught his attention. It had made him stop, and look and _pay attention_. Tony was vibrating with spite and pride, glowing over a job well done, and Mother had wrapped her worrying warm arms around her. She’d kissed her temple and she’d said: _Be grateful for what you have. Be grateful, you won’t know how much it meant until it’s gone._

Tony hadn’t been grateful for anything most of her life, not her money, not her genius, not her success, not her fame, not her friends—and never, particularly, a shower curtain. 

Still, the water was hot. She stripped off her shirt and the jeans she’d been wearing for far too long. They landed just outside the spray of the water with filthy thumps, spraying more dust and dirt in every direction. Her underwear and bra weren’t ideal showering attire, but they felt _necessary_ nonetheless. “Was the bar of soap still an option?” Tony asked. She half-turned enough to see Natasha doing an Oscar-worthy performance of not paying any attention to her. “Or does that only come with a bucket?”

A drawer in the desk opened, Natasha rifled around the contents and pulled out a square of soap. She threw it across the room without getting up and went back to looking at her phone without pause. 

The hot water made the wounds on her hands hurt, it opened them up, so the water ran pink and black down her body. Her skin felt raw, stretched and thin. It came clean by degrees, after she rinsed and scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed again. 

“Shampoo?” Tony asked. She turned her back to the shower head, let the water run through days worth of sweat, oil and dirt. Natasha pulled the drawer open again, rifled through it and produced a little bottle that she tossed over. This time, just for a second longer, she looked at Tony. It was there and gone again, over before it could be assessed. 

“You’re a prisoner,” Natasha said when Tony was washing her hair for the second time.

“Gee. I thought this was a new hotel experience.”

That made Natasha sigh at her. “The last time you were a prisoner you said I couldn’t torture you because Steve wouldn’t allow it.”

Tony turned the nozzle on the shower off, shook the water out of her hair as her skin crawled with gooseflesh. The coolness of the open room was a stark, ugly contrast to the heat of the water. “I don’t prefer to participate in the foreplay portion of torture.” She walked over to the desk, dripping water like little lakes every step of the way. “But, if you need to talk for this to work for you, don’t let me stop you.” Tony reached for the clothes on the table top and Natasha’s hand snapped shut around her wrist. 

They were as close as lovers, standing so close Natasha’s suit was leaving a physical impression on Tony’s body. It was heart-stopping, breath-stealing closeness. “But Steve’s not here,” Natasha whispered against the side of her face, “because of _you_.”

Tony tipped her head away from Natasha’s lips, kept her body loose and her voice light. “But here’s the thing, there’s only maybe four? Maybe five people left alive that know exactly what you’re capable of, Natasha. Now, Steven thinks he knows but he doesn’t really, does he? None of them know.” She relaxed into the anger vibrating off Natasha’s body, “but I do.”

“This isn’t your world,” Natasha said with a smile. “You have no idea what—”

“But I do,” Tony answered. “I know _exactly_ what happens when you peel back this mask and you show them, show _him_ what you are underneath.” She shrugged. “Can I get my clothes now?”

Natasha let go of her wrist. “You can get dressed in the room.”

They went back, through hallways echoing with noise coming from nowhere exactly, to the doorway that seemed to melt into the walls. Back to the room with no windows, no clock, no privacy and no safety. Natasha stood in the hallway outside, smiling with no vile glee, like a hostess at a fancy dinner place leading Tony to her seat. 

“Drink the water,” Natasha said before the cranked shut.

Then it was only Tony, alone, dripping water on the floor. She pressed her back to the concrete (as cold as ice) and closed her eyes. Her knees didn’t give out but go weak, her body slid down and she covered her face with both hands. There was a shake in her muscles and the brief, awful stinging in her eyes. 

(No. No. No.) Tony cleared her throat, “we’ve dealt with worse,” she said to nobody. “We can deal with this.”

# B SIDE

Tony wasn’t sleeping; but he was hungry. He let that marinate in his empty gut, let it fester and bubble and boil until it was creeping up his esophagus like acid burn. A good son wouldn’t have managed to be hungry, a good son wouldn’t have been laying in the darkness, memorizing the sound of the best friend of his Mother’s killer breathing. 

No. No, Bucky was Steve’s best friend, and Bucky was but was _not_ the Winter Soldier, and it was the Winter Soldier that had killed Tony’s Mother. They were one in the same and completely different from each other. 

“Come on,” Tony said into the darkness. He pulled himself up to sitting as the lights turned on all around him. Across the room, Steve fucking Rogers was looking as guilty as a little boy with a lapful of cookies, coiling his shoelaces around his fingertips. “I’ll make you an omelet or six, I can’t sleep anyway.” 

They made quite a parade down the stairs. Tony leading the way as Steve tried to stay close but not intimately close, not comforting-my-wife close. (That was enough of a thought to give a man a migraine. How Steve looked like he wanted to wrap his whole body around Tony but he was holding it back, holding it inside. Still the muscles in his arm seemed quiver, always fighting to fulfill that impulse.) “You don’t ha— Ok, I’d love an omelet.” Steve sat, offered no assistance, just watched Tony pulling dishes out of familiar places.

“So,” Tony said with a carton of eggs in one hand, “how’d she take it?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. It wasn’t evasion, it was honesty. Steve Rogers had a face for many things, but not one good enough to bother trying to lie. “I thought, I thought she’d react differently when I told her but she just—” Steve shrugged. “Natasha said I didn’t have to be the one to tell her, but I did. It had to be me, because it was _Bucky_ , because if I didn’t… Because if it wasn’t me that told her, then she’d think I was hiding it.”

“Did you want to hide it?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Steve asked. “If I thought, if there had been any way that she never would have had to know? I wouldn’t have told her. But there wasn’t. Things like this? They always come out.” 

Tony pulled a good pan out, set it on the stove, contemplated the ambitions assembly of ingredients waiting on the counter. Cooking was relaxing because it was a matter of putting the right things together in the right order. (And Tony was good at that, figuring out where exactly things went, and how exactly they worked together.) “It hasn’t come up where I’m from.”

“Then he’s a coward,” Steve said.

(Oh, that was _funny_. To think of Captain America being called a coward by anyone. To think how offended he’d be to hear it, how he’d defend himself, because Steve was reliable at not worrying too much about his own safety.) Tony smiled at the stove top, but he shrugged too. “Maybe he thinks he’s protecting someone.”

“Himself.”

Tony leaned against the counter, crossed his arms over his chest. His tongue was barely damp across his dry lips. “I’m not his number one fan,” Tony admitted, “but, shouldn’t you be defending him?”

“Do you want me to?” Steve asked.

“Do you want to?”

That made Steve leaned back into the seat. He was turning the idea over, fiddling with a bottle top that had been left sitting on the table, moving it between his fingers until he came up with the answer he was searching for. “I,” started and stopped, Steve frowned down at the bottle top. “I thought Bucky was dead. I saw him, alive, and I thought I would do anything to save him this time. I thought, nobody knows me the way Bucky does. Nobody ever cared about me like that,” Steve shrugged, dragged his eyes up from the bottle cap. “That’s just a feeling, I _know_ there are people here,” his fingers touched the table, “right _now_ that do their best to know me, that care about me. There’s people that’d give their lives for mine, people that follow me into any fight I pick. I love Bucky, I do. Choosing to tell her, was choosing to move on. I could have kept it a secret, protected myself and Bucky. But it wouldn’t have been about protecting her. Secrets like that are _always_ about protecting yourself.”

It was unthinkable, the look of rubbed-raw agony on Steve’s face. The sheer force of will that kept the eye contact between them. The razor-sliced feeling of his throat when he finally looked away, down, at the pile of eggs and the assortment of good breakfast vegetables. “You really love her,” he looked up again.

“Yes,” Steve said. 

He laughed, but it was a cough, a harsh sound to hold off other things, his hand across his mouth, his body sagging back against the counter as he tried to find stable footing. “I can’t even get the guy to give me the benefit of the doubt,” he said. No, no, he didn’t want to think about that. Not _right_ now. 

“We can be dicks,” Steve said, “we Steve Rogers. People always forget that. I’ve got two thirds of the planet convinced I’ve never spoken a swear word in my life. That I’ve never entertained a dirty thought. That I was born out of the womb of truth, justice and the American way. Truth is, I’m just trying to do my best.”

“Your best is still better than the average best.”

Steve snorted at that. “My best is an exaggeration that the men in the PR department get paid to sell. They put me up next to my fucking wife, they say, I bring out the best in her, they say I inspire her to greatness. That’s bullshit. Tony had greatness before I showed up. What they mean is, _here’s a hero from a comic book, a relic from another time, here’s a guy we all agree is real swell_. They think I spend my time telling her not to build bombs and kill people. They think I keep her _under control_. That’s because they’re afraid of her. Not because she’s intelligent, not because she’s capable, not because she’s strong but because she’s a woman that’s got ideas and she isn’t _afraid_ of them. Hydra, Vanko—Aldrich Killian, they all came after her because they tried to make her scared, they tried to force her to take the blame for who they were, for how their life went, and she didn’t. Tony infuriates people because no matter how hard they hit her, she won’t stay down.”

It didn’t _feel_ that way when the so-called super-villains started crawling out of the woodwork of his world. It felt like an endless parade of monsters he’d created, a non-stop assault of problems he should have been able to solve. There was a body count of innocent lives that was following him around, like a stack of stones on his shoulders, and no amount of his good intentions and no matter how many times he stood back up, those stones got no lighter. That body count got no smaller, no easier to bear. The _guilt_ didn’t _stop_.

“I don’t know who I am in your world, but I do know that I’ve never been the man the newspapers say I am. I went to war because I didn’t want to die an irrelevant skinny sick man, settling for what he could get. I wanted to mean something to the world, I wanted to matter, I wanted to _win_ for once.” Steve sighed. 

That was too much. Too many words, too many things to sort out, Tony nodded along and cleared his throat, glanced back at the eggs, “so, what do you like in your omelet? Onion? Sausage, I’ve got cheese?”

“Whatever you make is good,” Steve said. “I’ll eat almost anything.”

Of course, he would. No matter what Steve said, he was annoying fucking perfect. Tony nodded and threw the onion at him. “Make yourself useful,” he said.

# A SIDE

The new clothes felt nice. It was an easy thing to concentrate on: how overlooked a freshly laundered pair of pants really were. Even if they were these paper-thin hospital or prisoner scrub type of pants. They were nice against her clean skin. It was important to concentrate on that, how nice it felt, how pleasant being clean was. 

Someone must have taught her that, to find something: anything, one little thing, in a great sea of bad and overwhelming things, to find that one little thing and think of it. Think of it as hard as you could, until it took over your face and your skin and your body, until it became a shell. Shells protected you, they gave you space to be alone no matter how full the room was. It gave you a place to think no matter what camera was pointed at you.

So, Tony marveled at the magnificence of clean cotton: laying loosely on her prisoner’s bed with her arms behind her head, her eyes half closed, and her legs crossed at the ankle. She was a picture of perfect arrogance: a woman that wouldn’t be intimidated.

Inside, her brain was filled with the sound of metal fists and nearly-human-skin. It was filling up with blood seeping (not pouring) out of fresh wounds, and split lips. It was the purple-pink pressure marks she’d left on Steven’s face. The way his feet scraped the ground as he staggered to his feet. 

There _must_ have been a moment, there had to have been at _least_ once that he’d put his hands up, that he’d made the effort, that he’d even _bothered_ to defend himself. In the beginning, when the suit was half-assembled and the anger was a fine-rolling boil. (At him, at the grandiosity of his presence, as if he had been summoned as the only man alive that could command her to behave. Or because he had wanted to come, because he had wanted to drag her back, or because he had never trusted her—it hadn’t mattered. It hadn’t mattered why Happy had brought her, only that he _had_ , that he hadn’t trusted her, that all the time he’d spent by her side had been a lie, that Pepper’s promises of loving Tony had been a lie, that Steven had ever pretended to allow her any freedom—)

Steven had fought back.

He just hadn’t fought much, he hadn’t fought like it mattered. He’d stood, and he’d taken his beating because it wouldn’t really be Steven if he hadn’t. 

It had taken weeks, like months, of _effort_ to convince Steve to spar with her, to treat her like an equal. He had been insistent, and stubborn, and annoyed her every time she brought it up. They weren’t equals. He had superhuman advantages that she didn’t, he could heal faster and he could hit harder and he— 

She’d made a suit just for kicking his ass, something light, durable, quick and shock-absorbing. The first time he’d hit her back like he meant it, it knocked her flat on her ass, and she was crowing with victory while he babbled his litany of apologies. She hit him back, mid-sorry, and that-had-been- _that_. 

Steven should have fought back. 

Maybe, or maybe she just should have noticed he didn’t. Maybe she should have stopped sooner. Maybe she should have listened to his front-facing palms and his condescending words, saying things like _I don’t want to fight_ that meant things like _but I know you’ll make this a fight anyway._

Maybe didn’t matter. Maybe didn’t get her out of here. 

But the clothes were nice, and the pillow smelled clean, and she could wait just as long as they wanted her to wait.

# B SIDE

All the old footage was grainy and dull. Time had faded the vibrancy of life until it was a collection of choppy images with visual static separating now-from-then. (People had a way of thinking of Steve like that, as a grainy image from a distant time. As if people were so different seventy years ago.) It wasn’t the quality of the film that made the old man in the video a stranger. 

No, time had made Howard a stranger. It had taken all the vibrancy and possibility of his youth and turned it dust colored. It had quieted his voice to a somber tone, tempered his impetuosity to disapproval. 

“I really,” Tony said from next to him. He was leaning into the seat of the Roadster, one of his hands casually looped over the wheel of the car, the other slippery-gripped around a glass of liquor Steve had retrieved from it’s hiding place. “ _Really_ hated my father.” There was no reason for the smile on his face then. “I was never good enough for him—I never could have been. Or maybe,” he didn’t look away from the screen, from his father slipping an arm around his wife. “It wasn’t me. Maybe he just couldn’t admit that he loved me. Or that he was proud. Or that I’d done something good.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if Steve was meant to say something. These sorts of conversations were landmines, and he hadn’t learned the safe places to put his feet down yet. So, he hummed a response to indicate he was listening, he watched Tony watching the screen. 

“Did they meet before?”

“Who?”

“Bucky,” seethed anger, “and Howard.”

Steve took a sip of his own drink, (wished it was more effective than the brief tingle it managed) and nodded. “Yeah. They met. They weren’t friends, but they were friendly when they were around one another. Bucky’s like that, he could make anyone like him.”

Tony considered that, turned it over and over and then he hit a button on the controller laying on the seat by his thigh. The screen went dark and the room was silent. Tony took another drink and then one more. “How’d you get her to marry you, Rogers?”

That caught him in the ribs, like a laugh, a tickle he wasn’t prepared for. Steve snorted into the rim of his glass and spilt the liquor all over his hand. “There’s not many people in the world that think I had anything to say about it.”

“I’m not exactly the marrying type.” Tony was half-smirking, looking perfectly pleased with the wet spots on Steve’s lap (or maybe at his embarrassment). “I’m only barely managing to be the steady girlfriend type.”

“I wouldn’t exactly class myself as the marrying type either,” he put his hand up to stave off what was certain to be an outpouring of disbelief and sarcasm. “It was never a priority for me. Even when I thought, I really like this woman, and even when I thought, I really love her, I didn’t think we’d get married. Tony—you, I guess—just aren’t the sort of person you imagine getting married. I don’t know.”

“What type are we?”

(Steve had walked into that. Now he had to dance back out.) “Independent.”

Tony rolled his eyes.

“I think, marrying me gave her a shield that protects her from public opinion. There’s always going to be the sour faced women on the morning shows that call her names, and there’s always going to be the gossip rags that say she’s no good. There’s a real house wife of some city, that thinks Tony doesn’t deserve me because the only wifely duty she’d be good at is—it doesn’t bear repeating.” Although it had been repeated, over and over, when Tony heard it the first time. It had been a constant stream of anger going from their bedroom, to the office, to the battlefield until she’d exhausted herself. “But, they don’t say it to her face. They don’t bother her in interviews. They know I’m behind her and that protects her.”

“You really believe that’s why she married you?”

“No,” Steve said. “I think she married me because it was a really boring party, we had sex in an elevator, she lost her shoes in a fountain and we ended up singing karaoke with a bunch of college kids. I think she married me because she loves me. I just think, we stayed married, we _are_ married because of the benefits.”

Tony made a face, took a sip of his drink and cleared his throat. “An elevator?”

“Yes.”

“A public elevator?”

“Yes.”

Tony took another sip and shrugged, “I don’t know why my Mother married my Father. I wished she hadn’t.”

“You wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t,” Steve said.

That made Tony shrug again, he picked up the remote and hit another button. It queued up a different video, another fabulously filmed scene of the Stark’s glamorous home. “She wouldn’t have been murdered either. That’s easier to live with isn’t it? If I was never born, I wouldn’t know any different. She could live, she could be alive right now.”

Things were never so simple. If this Tony had been his Tony, he would have hugged her. He would have kissed her forehead while she kept her back straight and her muscle stiff. He would have waited until her posture loosened, until she closed her eyes, until she let herself be comforted. But this wasn’t his Tony, and he didn’t know what to do. “She was a beautiful woman,” Steve offered.

Tony just nodded, “she was.”

# A SIDE

All hospital rooms smelled the same: tile, filtered air, anti-septic. The sheets were cardboard under his hands, the mattress beneath him groaned and the frame itself creaked and squeaked when he moved. The sounds were familiar, filtering in through his overstuffed head. (That was swelling, probably, somewhere, the sensation of his body working overtime to cure a concussion.) 

“Where are we?” he asked the world beyond his eyelids. All hospitals were the same hospital, and there was no telling which side of the ocean this one was on. He managed to peel his eyes open, just far enough to see Sam slouched into the chair by the bed, arms crossed, head tipped down, so his chin was against his chest. He was asleep, with his feet braced against the floor to keep him from falling out of the chair. 

He was asleep sure, but asleep in different clothes than he’d had the day before and that meant he had time to recover from the dart, time to wake up and shake it off and change his clothes. That meant hours, or maybe it meant days. It meant _time_ had passed. 

Steve closed his eyes again, concentrated on breathing in and out, looking for the parts of his body that hurt. Besides his head, there was a matter of a split in his lip when he ran his tongue across it. There was pain in his fingertips when he pushed them against the sheet—

It was brighter the next time he opened his eyes, the chair by his bed was empty but the door was open. A TV set in the wall was playing the news on mute: a barrage of colors and a series of images that didn’t make sense without words. Steve shoved his palms against the bed to lift himself upright. 

“You’re an idiot.” That was Natasha, just outside his field of vision: lounging in a corner by the window letting all the awful sunlight into the room. She moved, scraping a chair across the floor, dropping her heavy-soled shoes down against the floor and sliding up to her feet in the full Black Widow costume. It whispered when she moved, like a leather-skinned animal. “She was going to kill you.”

That was a funny thing to say. A funny thing to think of, that _Tony_ was capable of anything like it. Or it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a stretch, it wasn’t a _leap_ at all, what with how he’d built Ultron, not with the body count Ultron had amassed in end. That wasn’t _intentional_ , that wasn’t _on purpose_ , that hadn’t been what Tony had _wanted_. Tony didn’t _want_ to kill people. (Or did he, he might have, once, when he was still too new to heroics to know any better, when he was stuttering over an excuse at a news conference saying _I am Iron Man_.)

It wasn’t the same, not like the white-hot-rage on _her_ face as the suit had spread across her body, covering her in a protective shell. It hid her face but it hadn’t managed to do much to hide that rage. 

Steve was good at bringing that out in people. He’d stood opposite everyone from a first grade bully to Bucky his-best-friend, and one way or another, he had always managed to bring them to that same point. He’d always reduced them to animal anger.

Tony, this _Tony_ , she’d meant to hit him. She’d meant to fight. She’d meant to make it _hurt_. 

But Tony was _Tony_. “No, she didn’t,” Steve said.

“The coma she put you in says differently.” Natasha shook her head at him, at the situation, at the bruises still going yellow and green on his face. “ _Rogers_.”

Steve was sore, and stiff, feeling a bit dried out. But he wasn’t dead. He could have been dead. That was the important bit, Tony-was-Tony and Tony didn’t _kill_ anyone that he absolutely didn’t have to. He didn’t _play_ , he didn’t _drag it out_ , when he couldn’t subdue someone, when it came down to life or death, it was as quick as he could make it. 

Tony-was-Tony, looking like a man who’d had his heart ripped out, trying to piece together how sometimes soldiers died, working through the reality of Coulson’s death, saying things like _we’re not soldiers_. 

No, this Tony was furious, was seething in rage, but she hadn’t wanted to kill him. She’d introduced herself with a broken bone, with her voice modulated through the mouthpiece of the suit ( _do you believe in God, Steven_ ) and she’d made a fantastic mess but, she hadn’t come to kill him then. She hadn’t been trying to kill him in that forest; she hadn’t ever been trying to kill him. 

(What was it that Natasha had said to him? _The only thing we do know is she is interested in you_. That interest was aggressive anger, it was outrage, it was the suit she’d built to protect her. And it was her in the forest, hitting him every time he tried to get back to his feet, but it wasn’t _lethal_.)

“If Tony wanted me dead, I’d be dead,” he said. “Where is she?”

Natasha shifted her weight, rested her crossed arms against her chest and pressed her lips together. 

“What did you do with her, Nat?”

“Your head’s not clear on this one,” was her answer. “We tried it your way; she _attacked_ you. She can’t be trusted.”

No, maybe she couldn’t be. Maybe they did have to treat her like a threat, maybe they did need to keep her confined, in a cage, constantly monitored. Maybe it was _best_ , but it didn’t feel _right_. 

Because he’d heard her voice in the forest, he’d seen her face when she was on her knees with her hands on his face. He’d seen her in the last seconds before he blacked out, with all the anger peeled back and nothing but her fear and her loneliness showing. He’d heard her mounting a mediocre defense (he was supposed to fight back), and he’d felt her hand move off his face.

Tony could have killed him, and she could have put up a fight, and she could have done _worse_ , but she hadn’t. She’d sat on her knees in the forest, stripped of all the anger, and she’d let herself be _taken_ prisoner.

 _Remember Happy_ , she’d said.

It wasn’t an excuse, it didn’t fix anything, but it was _something_ and Steve had made gut choices with less. “Where did you put her?” Steve asked again.

Natasha looked over her shoulder, out the door, at anything but him with her eyes rolling and her head shaking. She barely managed to say, “she’s in a cell in the basement. And she’s staying there, Rogers. We let her out, she calls the suit, there’s no telling what it’ll take to stop her. We let her out, she gets to Friday, there’s no telling what she can do.”

That much was true; there was no telling what she was capable of. There was no telling what she could do if she had all the motivation and resources to really start to cause trouble. “My head is clear on this,” he said. “We have to convince her to trust _us_.”

“Us?” Natasha repeated. “She _attacked_ us.”

He sighed. “I’m not defending her.”

“You sound like you are.”

“Look,” Steve said. He turned so his legs were hanging off the side of the bed, so his hands were around the deflated edges of the mattress, so she was looking right at his face again. “She’s _Tony_. We know Tony, we know what Tony does when he doesn’t feel safe. He builds armies of Iron Man suits, he invites terrorists to his house—he builds Ultron. She’s _dangerous_ because she’s not safe and she won’t stop until she feels safe.”

“She’s safe in a concrete room,” Natasha answered.

“She’s _trapped_.” Natasha understood that, but there were bruises on his face and mountains of evidence, and she wasn’t going to give up her case. She wasn’t going to listen to him when he could find a reason to sympathize with anyone. He’d invited Wanda because he’d remembered what it felt like to be desperate to make a difference, he’d defended Bucky because they grew up together, but even he never thought he’d ever be trying to talk Tony fucking Stark out of a taking the blame for something (s)he’d done. “I want to talk to her.”

“No.” But Natasha sighed. “Not now. You’ve been in a coma for two days, you need to finish recovering from the last time she beat your ass before you try again.” She hissed something quick and hard under her breath before she stepped away. “Until then, she stays where she is.” And, just as quick, “lay back down. I’ll send Sam in with something for you to eat.”


	16. Chapter 16

# A SIDE

Steve wasn’t discharged from his hospital room, but he picked up his things and left regardless. He’d been expecting a nurse in the hallway, carrying papers and wearing practical shoes, telling him that he simply couldn’t go. There was probably a good reason why he needed to lay in his bed for another four-or-five hours. Something about the still-brittle feeling to his face, the blurry sensation of an almost headache when he stood up. Maybe something to the blackened skin under his fingernails. 

A long series of trials had taught Steve that it didn’t matter if he was laying down or standing up, his body would go about the business of fixing itself regardless. Whatever Erskine had put into him required nothing at all from him except the determination to keep going. So he pulled out the IV they’d put in his arm and he excused himself from the monitors and other medical wires and tubes. They’d gone through the formality of stripping him naked and putting him in a hospital gown. (It was cover with little Avengers symbols, presumably because the idea of it amused Tony. Perhaps because Tony had to have his name on everything he paid for.) Steve had searched through the cupboards on the wall, and the drawers looking for anything that might resemble pants, or at very least, a second hospital gown. He found nothing, so he took the sheet and wrapped it like a towel around his waist. With one hand on the knot to keep it from slipping it was a perfect serviceable covering.

There was no nurse in the hallway. Nobody sitting at the little station with the monitors flashing warnings about medical malfunctions. There wasn’t even any noise to alert a soul that he’d decided to leave the bed. (And that was another thing about hospitals and warning bells that echoed everywhere you went.) 

Steve went looking for his room, intent on clothes and a toothbrush to do something about the filthy taste of his mouth, but he only made through one set of stairs and a single hallway before he found himself half-standing, half-stooping, opposite Colonel James Rhodes, holding a stack of papers in his hand and wearing a frown on his face. Recognition bloomed slowly on his face, starting in his eyes that relaxed from the deep frowning to the sort of concern that could only be considered condescending. It went through his body, loosening up all the aggravated tightness of his shoulders and his arms, it loosened his posture and it brought his quick walk to a quiet halt. Finally, it was a smile at the very edges of his lips, a slight showing of teeth as he looked pointedly at the sheet wrapped around Steve’s waist and then up at his face. “I didn’t have pants,” Steve said before anything else could be said.

“I just wish I had a camera,” Rhodey assured him.

Steve sighed, “I’m sure there’s cameras in the hallway.”

Rhodey crossed his arms over his chest, tucked the papers under one arm and nodded his head. “Probably is,” he agreed. “That was a pretty quick coma, even for you.”

“How quick?” Steve asked. “I don’t know what day it is.”

And then Rhodey went through the trouble of looking at his watch (as if he didn’t know what day it was) before he said, “June 11th. About eight in the morning.”

That was forty-eight hours (give or take an hour) since she’d walked into the clearing in the forest outside the city. It was less than two full days and he’d been awake the night before when there was light outside. Steve turned so he could lean his back against the wall (because he’d forgotten the gown didn’t close in the back, and how cold the walls were), and shook his head. “How long has she been back?” he asked.

Rhodey shifted, like he didn’t even know he was doing it, so they were looking directly at one another. “Tony?” was an unnecessarily clarification, but Steve nodded the conversation onward. “About thirty-six hours.” 

Thirty-six hours was a lifetime in a room with no windows and no chance of escape. Thirty-six hours was infinity when you were at the mercy of strangers. Steve tipped his head back, let his eyes close, briefly considered he might have been overly ambitious in getting out of bed so soon. That fuzzy sensation in his head was starting to pulse, and his fingers hurt.

“You knew how to disarm the suit,” Rhodey said. As accusations went, it was offered with little condemnation. It was just a fact: Steve had known the weak bits of the suit, he had known how to pull it apart if he needed to (and he had needed to, about the fifth them she’d effortlessly thrown him on his ass in the dirt). 

“It was more difficult than I anticipated.”

“They said you left the shield in the jet.”

Well, that had been a strategic choice. The shield stood for something he just couldn’t bring himself to carry into the fight. It was a symbol of something beyond a pissy fist fight between him and the woman who was currently taking up Tony’s space in the world. Steve opened his eyes, looked across the hallway at the smoldering-fury making Rhodey’s face twist all out of shape. “It’s been a long time since I fought someone as good at anticipating my moves as she is,” he said. That felt good to say, to admit that he had put some effort into the fight, but she had met them all with her fists. “Rhodey,” he started.

“Even if she knew every move you were making, I find it hard to believe that you couldn’t have,” Rhodey motioned upward at his own face, “done better.”

“She doesn’t belong—”

“Rogers,” Rhodey snapped,

“In that cell,” Steve finished.

That made the hallway quiet. It settled everything to fine dust between them, left the air full of half-thought, half-expressed things. Rhodey narrowed his eyes at him, pursed his lips like he was going to speak but didn’t. His knuckles tightened, the papers in his fist creaked, and his shoulders tipped forward like he was going to attack at any-given-second. (What a fight that would be, Colonel James Rhodes defending his best friend, and Steve trying not to get punched in the face again.) “What did you say?”

“She doesn’t belong in that cell.” (Funny how Rhodey didn’t want to get caught agreeing with him about anything. What a pickle that left them in.) “We need her to trust us.”

“Ha,” Rhodey coughed.

“Look,” Steve said. He tightened his hand around the knot that felt like it was slipping off his waist (but wasn’t) and said, “I’m not Tony Stark’s biggest fan, and I haven’t always done the right thing. I know I’m part of the reason she’s in there—but I saw something in the forest that I’ve never seen from Tony,” a moment of the mask breaking, a moment of something undeniably true, a moment of something that reminded him of the way Bucky used to look at him in ugly alleys right after he’d punched a bully picking on Steve. That look of desperate exasperation, just before Bucky’s arm folded across his shoulders, just before he was bodily pulled into the offered safety of Bucky’s bigger body. “I need to know what it was.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to listen to you at the moment,” Rhodey said. He wasn’t going to address the reasons Steve offered, not when they served his purpose. “Natasha had her in the cell faster than they had you in a hospital bed. She’s got Sam, and she’s got Hill on her side. You can’t even stand up straight.”

“I can handle Natasha,” Steve said. (Just as soon as he had pants.) “Can you see her, convince her that this wasn’t my intention?”

“What was your intention, Steve?”

Steve didn’t know what his intention had been; he hadn’t thought it through, not matter how many hours he’d spent thinking it over. The idea of the idea of what he meant to do was charred in his head, overthought without resolution. There was no resolution, no real answer, just the idea that he’d been sent, and that it was necessary, and that she couldn’t be left out in the world to do what she pleased. (That she couldn’t be trusted; that was what he’d thought. She could not be trusted, her allegiances were unknown but her abilities were well documented. She had to be controlled, contained, restrained— He’d gotten that. He’d shown up in the forest repeating to himself how he was only going to talk, and he’d woken up in a hospital room with Tony secured in a prison cell. It was mission-accomplished, and there was no explaining the pit in the bottom of his stomach.) “Not this,” was all he could say. 

“I’m not doing this for you,” Rhodey said. Of course, he wasn’t. “Go lay down before you fall over.”

# B SIDE

Imagination was a fun thing to have when you were eleven and causing trouble. It was useful when you were fifteen and full of possibilities, outsmarting your professors solely on the virtue of thinking outside a box. Tony had made a life of ignoring the necessity of boxes. But imagination was a bitch in the morning, when your dreams came into focus right before waking.

Time had eroded the image he held of his Mother. It hadn’t dimmed the photographs or the home movies, but it had made the picture in his mind fuzzy, as if he could not longer really say if exactly what color eyes she had. He couldn’t remember precisely how she liked to do her hair, or the tone of her voice when she sat next to him at the piano. His memory of his Mother was a series of cultivated details, a few selected anecdotes that he’d held onto after the funeral.

His imagination remembered her, remembered the pink in her cheeks, remembered the brightness of her eyes. There she was, a pretty pastel blemish in the pile of gray-toned corpses. There was her face and her arm reaching out toward him, there was her voice saying his name. And the hand that came from beneath her, the gleaming metal fingers that circled her throat. He could see it all in perfect HD quality, he could feel the bodies beneath his feet as he scrambled up the heap.

Tony slipped, screamed as he fell, and woke up in the real world (or what passed for it these days), gasping for breath. The sheets were damp around his body, his heart was throbbing against his chest. The dim grip of an almost hangover was making his head hurt as he sat up, trying to catch his breath. 

“Tony?” Steve mumbled. His hand gripped the bed, he pulled himself up from where he must have been sleeping on the floor. (What a perfect fucking gentleman he was.) “Nightmare?” 

“I’m fine, Cap.” He kicked the blankets off, got to his feet, scrubbed his fingers through his hair and considered his next move. Steve was agreeably mumbling to himself as he laid back down as if his floorboard bed was comfortable enough to return to. Of course he was, of course he was perfectly content to sleep on the floor by the bed, of course he was making himself available for whatever Tony needed.

And right now, he needed a shower and some coffee. The shower was simple, the water was hot enough to ease the nightmare-tightness from his shoulders. Finding fresh clothes was a breeze when he only had three days’ worth to his name. It was the trip from the bedroom to the kitchen that doomed him. He was all set on coffee and maybe a donut but Pepper was standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“You need to explain what’s happening to Happy,” she turned far enough to point back at the couch, to point directly at Happy looking at his hands laying loosely in his lap. He had the look of an overcooked dumpling, lumpy and liquid. “ _What exactly_ is happening?”

“Can I get coffee?”

“No,” Pepper said. That might have been hurt a bit more if she didn’t immediately follow that up with turning around and grabbing a to-go cup off the glass table by the couch. She held it out in front of her with an impatient shake. “What’s happening, Tony?”

The coffee was fresh and blistering hot, bitter with the right touch of sweetness. Tony took a sip to buy himself a minute and then licked the lingering taste off his lips. “I can’t explain it,” he said. “Not _scientifically_ ,” before Pepper could launch into a lecture. “Sometimes, it feels like—it feels like—”

“Déjà vu,” Happy said.

“Of what?” Pepper asked.

“My hypothesis,” (because hypothesis was a good word for situations when one needed to sound as if they had a better idea than they did), “is it’s the other universe we’re,” he really didn’t want to say, “feeling.”

Pepper looked back at Happy, then at him, then back at Happy and closed her eyes for a second and cleared her throat, “and what,” she opened her eyes to look at him again, “does that _mean_?”

“Something bad,” Happy mumbled.

“I don’t know.” That was the truth. He knew the feeling existed, he knew it didn’t belong to him, but it felt familiar enough that it could almost have. He knew it was _real_ but not what it represented, what it could potentially mean. “It’s not thoughts, it’s just a feeling.”

“A feeling.”

“A _strong_ feeling.” Happy picked himself up off the couch and shuffled over to stand near them. He was dressed in the same clothes, looking as if he hadn’t left his bed in two days, as if he’d lost a prize fight with a gorilla. (He looked like shit.) There he was, “can you feel anything? Can you feel her?”

No. Tony had been consumed by feeling his way through the shock of his parents’ murder; he hadn’t any time left to pay attention to what she might have been trying to tell him. “I’ve been—” Tony shrugged. “I haven’t noticed anything.”

There were tears in Pepper’s eyes, pink spots under her freckles, she was looking sideways, collecting herself before she tried to speak. “This makes no sense,” carried no real weight, “none of these makes any sense.”

“I was going to the lab,” Tony offered. “Sometimes—I think it works best when I’m not trying to make it happen. I’m sure she’s fine,” he directed that at Happy. But it didn’t even earn him as much as a strained smile. “You should try to rest,” Tony said. “She wouldn’t like seeing you like this.”

Happy shrugged. Pepper was dabbing her eyes with a tissue, “come on,” was as chipper as it possibly could be. “Let’s find a good bed, I can work anywhere.” She took Happy’s hand to pull him after her, and he went with dragging footsteps.

# A SIDE

Morning was warm sunshine through glass windows. Morning was Jarvis’ voice growing in volume from a welcoming whisper to conversational cadence. Morning was a much needed stretch under blankets warmed from a good night’s sleep. It was relaxing back into a puddle of warmth she’d made and walking her fingertips out from under her own blanket to the flimsy thing that passed for a blanket for Steve. 

Morning was her husband, the shape of his smile against the side of her face and the eager, easy way he always followed where her hands pulled. Even the mornings when he wasn’t there, he was still close, still near enough that she could get to him within minutes. 

Morning was nothing in a concrete box. For that matter, there was no real reason to assume that the coming of the light meant a night had passed or a morning had come. Time was wavy in places like this, always getting caught on itself, folding over and forming whirlpools. The only constant was the gray walls and the static quality of the silence. 

Tony sat up, put her bare feet on the cold floor and wait for the door. She counted seconds to make minutes.

One.

Two.

Three.

The door opened at minute four, second twenty nine. Natasha stepped inside with a bowl of what passed for food for criminals. It was gray and watery, sloshing in the cold bowl she’d brought. There was another water bottle to replace the ones from the day before. “I thought you must be hungry,” Natasha said.

Five.

And the door closed just shy of minute six, the little red light on the camera in the corner flicked off. The vent circulating the air went conspicuously, ominously silent. The only sound in the room was their breathing, the tap of the bowl against the ground when Tony didn’t move to accept it and the scuff and drag of Black Widow’s skin-tight suit against the wall behind her. She had no pockets to tuck her hands in so she crossed her arms instead. 

Tony had been asked to defend herself as long as she could remember. The crimes were many, and varied, everything from willfulness to maliciousness. They called her names that bore no repeating, accused her of everything from debauchery to outright murder. Her childhood was an exhaustive search for a defense that worked, a constant rush of noise and sound and agony. It had followed her into adulthood, it had exhausted her at her work desk, putting all her thoughts into little compartments so her morals and her heart and her brain and her bank account never had to mix. 

Natasha hadn’t said a word, and all the same, she was waiting for Tony to defend herself. She was waiting to be persuaded, she was waiting to deny absolution. That was a clever torture, to leave the implication of forgiveness that couldn’t be attained. The hope of escape was far worse than the reality of four walls and a blinking red light. 

Tony leaned back against the wall, pulled one of her legs back up and rested her heel against the edge of the bed. She tilted her head to the side, and she counted seconds to make minutes.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

“I expected you to ask about your friend,” Natasha said.

Ten.

Eleven.

Natasha has a beautiful smile. Tony had seen that, in her world, where they were friends. She’d seen Natasha smile with little wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, seen her laugh until her face was red, seen her when she was stripped bare of pretense and aggression, nothing but another woman trying to make something out of the rotten deal she’d been given. But this Natasha, right here, she smiled like a wooden doll, with no light or life in her face. “No? Aren’t you worried where he is? What he thinks? It must have been traumatizing for him, watching you beating a man to death.”

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

“We’re st—”

Tony drew in a breath when Natasha started to speak and let it out through her nose again. “When did he wake up?”

“Who?”

“Steven.” Tony looked sideways, toward an empty wall, and considered the things her husband and lived through. She thought of how quickly his body could heal itself when he wasn’t stubbornly insisting he didn’t need sleep, or food, or medicine. What a pair they’d been, screaming at one another about antibiotics in the hallway of a hospital. The nurses and doctors scrambling to try to staunch the bleeding that Steve had barely taken a moment to notice while he repeated, again and again, how he didn’t need them. How he could make it without them, how he was fine, would be fine, hadn’t needed to be there. “He’s awake but he’s not walking.”

“Steve is in a coma.”

Tony smiled at the wall, nodded her head, and ran her tongue across her lips. She looked back at Natasha, at her perfect porcelain mask of a face. That was the thing, Natasha never flinched; they’d trained her out of it. She didn’t flinch when she lied, when she fought, when she killed, when she thought she was dying. She never, ever flinched. “Natasha,” Tony shrugged, “there is no emotional connection for you to exploit. There’s no weaknesses for you to get your fingers into. What,” she spread her arms in either direction, “could you possibly threaten me with? What torture is worse than the one I am currently living? I appreciate this is difficult for you. Don’t insult my intelligence by lying to me.”

Natasha arched away from the wall, motioned into the air so the man controlling the door would open it. It cracked as it started to swing out, Natasha paused long enough to say, “you do have a weakness. He’s six foot. He likes stars, stripes, and justice.”

“He’s awake,” Tony countered. “And he doesn’t like what you’re doing.”

Natasha didn’t bother to confirm or deny when she could do both by walking out the door. Her departure was supposed to leave Tony floundering to figure out the truth. It was supposed to remind her that she was a prisoner, trapped and powerless, and Natasha was her ambivalent jailor. But the closed door was a respite from the world beyond it, the sound of the air vent turning on again gave her something to hear beside her own heartbeat.

# B SIDE

Steve hadn’t felt anything, not a single thing, that could have been described as déjà vu since he woke up next to a man instead of his wife. He’d felt fear. Dread. Anger. Disappointment. He’d marinated in self-pity when the moment called for it, but none of it had felt as if it were anything but a natural reaction to the circumstances. 

Happy had told him, back at the airport, about the feeling. But Happy was _Happy_ , full of gut feelings and things that Steve didn’t always understand. The fact that half of what Happy said to him sounded not necessarily real didn’t meant it wasn’t real enough for Happy, but it was _Tony_ down the stairs, telling Pepper that he couldn’t explain it but he knew it was real.

Tony could feel Steve’s wife, across whatever divided them from one another. That had implications that twisted like a dull knife in his gut. 

Because Rhodey had been right, weeks ago, when he’d said, _She’s not making friends._

Tony could be a natural disaster in motion, a rock slide on a step hill, a wildfire consuming dry brush, a god damn earthquake razing cities to the ground. She would leave nothing but casualties behind her. 

(And why? Because not so very long ago, a man who had called himself a friend, and had been almost a father, had hired some men in a desert to kill her. Because those men had seen her face and dreamed of dollar bills and explosions. Because a quiet man named Yinsen with steady hands had put an electromagnet in her chest. Because Tony had been helpless once, at the mercy of men with low morals, with nothing to save her but her own brain and a quiet friend.)

No. It was, and it was _not_ that. 

Steve knocked on the doorframe of the guest room. Pepper was holding the tablet without the pretense of attempting to use it to work. Happy was turned so his back faced the door, sleeping or doing an excellent impersonation of it. The room was quiet, and dim. Pepper sniffled, wiped her cheeks with her hurried fingers, brushing away the tears that made her face shiny as she cleared her throat. “Yes?” she said.

“So,” Steve didn’t invite himself into the room but stay just outside of it, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. “Did that make sense to you? The déjà vu?”

Pepper looked at Happy, “it makes sense to them. I’ve never seen Happy this miserable—not since,” she sniffled again, cleared her throat, “not since we thought we lost Tony in Afghanistan. Maybe not even then. He kept saying, we were going to find her. That she was out there, that we couldn’t give up. He wouldn’t give up, he said we just had to keep trying. But this time, he just said it was bad.”

“I don’t feel anything like what they’re saying.”

“I don’t either,” Pepper said. Her smile was illuminated by the glow of the tablet, watery at the edges as she drew in a shuddering breath. “I don’t always understand the things that Tony does.”

It wasn’t a matter of understanding. It was a matter of Happy, sleeping fitfully to the side. A matter of Tony, of how he’d behaved since he woke up here. Of how desperate he’d looked when he found Steve at The Diamond. It was not _knowing_ where she was or how she was. “I miss her,” he said.

“I do too,” Pepper agreed. “It could be good. This Tony, feeling what she’s feeling? I mean,” her hand hovered over Happy’s shoulder, “it isn’t good, whatever happened there. But if they’re feeling anything, that has to mean whatever switched them is—still open? It’s still possible to switch them back?”

“That is good,” Steve agreed. “I’ll let you work.” 

Pepper nodded with a fading smile on her face, quietly going back to staring at the tablet. The house was startlingly quiet, and still. The kitchen was cold, the breakfast bars he forced himself to eat were only tolerable. Steve lingered at the top of the steps to the lab, trying to decide if he wanted to go down or not.

# A SIDE

Tony excelled at estimation; she just wasn’t always an exemplary judge of character. It wasn’t a virtue she’d spent too much time looking for when she was searching for bed partners, and it hadn’t necessarily been as important to her when she’d been sorting through applications for assistants. Pepper had been a matter of chemistry, and loyalty. (And honestly, Pepper might have gone the way of those that had come before her, there and gone again, driven away by Tony’s _eccentricities_ ). Happy, her Happy, the _real_ Happy who didn’t make friends and betray them, could have been luck.

Rhodey had started as a pretty face covering a brain just smart enough to make satisfying conversation. He’d been meant to be a momentary challenge, like any other thing she’d ever done to defy her father. So there was no telling how he’d lasted, but there he was:

Colonel James Rhodes, as big as life, slipping around the half-opened door looking like he ought to have had a hat tucked under his shoulder. He was dressed in civilian clothes, looking sheepish in a jail cell, carrying nothing at all in his hands and still managing to make it look heavy. The door creaked when it shifted from opening to closing again and Rhodey’s hand reached out, his voice rose just enough to be heard, “leave it open.”

Tony had prepared herself for every torture she could imagine (things like thumb-screws and philosophical talk with a megalomaniac demi-god of mischief) but she hadn’t been clever enough to think of _this_. To imagine how it felt to be stripped down to paper thin scrubs, dropped in a hollow room, looking at the man who had the face of her best friend. And it wasn’t his face, exactly Rhodey’s face, expressing his anger, and his regret, and looking at her as if he wanted to say that there were some things that simply couldn’t be avoided, some penalties that couldn’t simply be paid.

 _It’s not that simple_ , was how Rhodey was looking at her. But it wasn’t him. It was another man sharing the face of her world, watching her and thinking of the Tony they’d lost. “How are you doing?”

How did you prepare yourself for the realization of your nightmares? How did you formulate a strategy to survive something as simple, something as underestimated, as looking at a friend you desperately wanted but couldn’t have? “If you’re here to watch me shower, I think I’ll pass.”

“No.” Rhodey looked offended at the implication, outraged to think he’d participate in the charade. 

“I think I’ll pass anyway,” she said. She’d been across the room, taking up pacing to keep time, when the door opened. It had worked as well as any primitive clock, marking off seconds, and keeping her body moving. But the world and her feet and her heart had all seemed to still at the same time.

“I brought you,” Rhodey reached into his pocket and pulled out a watch. He held it out, so it was dangling by a strap off his extended fingers. 

Tony didn’t want to take it; the way she didn’t want to put too much faith into this man who had her friend’s face, but she took it anyway. It was a nice watch. Simple, shiny, masculine enough that it might even have been meant to belong to _Mr._ Stark. “So, what’s the trick, it stops working? It runs fast, and then slow?”

“There’s no trick,” Rhodey said.

Tony snorted. “When it’s Natasha, it’s always a trick.”

“Natasha didn’t send me,” Rhodey said. There was a voice in the hallway telling Rhodey to move away from her. He dropped his arms by his sides and stepped back until he was leaning against the wall.

“I’d rather not,” Tony said to the watch, to Rhodey, to the words, to the voice in the hall, to the walls keeping her here, to the scrubs she was wearing, to the hours that had passed. She’d rather not to the whole fucking world around her. She didn’t want to try to reason out who was telling the truth and who wasn’t; she didn’t want to play this game another fucking second.

She didn’t want the watch, but she wasn’t going to throw it away either. 

Maybe it was imagination, maybe it was what she wanted to see, how Rhodey’s face twisted up in pain. How he looked like he’d been punched in the gut. “You weren’t trying to kill him,” Rhodey said. It was and wasn’t a question.

“I thought Natasha didn’t send you.”

“She didn’t.”

“Then why does it sound like she did?”

Rhodey huffed, and Tony crossed her arms over her chest. They regarded one another. He looked out at the voice in the hallway telling him to hurry up and then, like he didn’t want to, he pulled a little cardboard box out of his pocket and threw it at her. “Steve sent me,” he said. “I can’t stay.”

It felt like, in those moments as Rhodey walked out the door, as it started to creak shut, as the walls closed around her, that she could start screaming without ever stopping. She did, maybe, inside her head, but on the outside, she just looked at the little cardboard box he’d thrown her. She used her thumb to lift the lid. Inside it was smooth white chalk, four little sticks of it. 

(Steve sent me.) Of course he had; there were few people that could be as precious, or as politely cruel as Steven Rogers. Tony wasn’t going to cry over chalk, or watches, or Rhodey.

(or Happy.)

(or four gray walls.)

(or anything.)

# A SIDE

Steve had excellent hearing but he could have heard Pepper tersely explaining that she needed to speak to him _right at that moment_ even if he hadn’t. The noise of her arrival hadn’t woken him up, but all the same he ended up walking down the hallway toward the noise of many voices shushing in soothing tone and one very angry, very feminine voice lifting ever so slightly above a polite speaking volume to say:

“Go get Steve Rogers and tell him that I need him to explain to me why Tony is in a jail cell.” 

Around a corner, into a conference room, just beyond the turned backs of Rhodey, Natasha and Hill, was Pepper Potts. She was pink with anger, no less capable of getting her way simply because they were willing to underestimate her. (That was a funny story he’d heard, the way you heard stories about things you hadn’t been there to see, how Pepper had killed a man to protect Tony. Steve could see that in her face. He could hear it in her voice.) 

“I think you’re forgetting that—”

“I’m not forgetting anything,” Pepper snapped back. She stared Natasha down with absolute fearlessness. Happy was standing behind her, looking down at his hands, grimacing at the sight of them or the sound of all the voices.

“Pepper,” Rhodey started.

“I didn’t send you,” Pepper said right into Natasha’s face, “I didn't ask for the _Avengers_ at all.”

“Guys,” Steve said. None of them jumped except Happy. He jerked his eyes upward, looked at Steve as if he were expecting to see something else. There was no telling if he was happy or sad about seeing Steve, only that he hadn’t expected it. “I can handle this.”

Natasha looked sideways at Hill who shrugged and Rhodey looked at Pepper, “you okay?”

Pepper straightened her back. “I’m fine, thank you Rhodey.”

Clearing the room out took a matter of minutes, and lingering backward glances. Steve stood by the door until the last body was through it and he swung it shut behind them. Happy had gone with Rhodey, looking anxious backward as he shuffled forward. There was nobody now except the woman that loved Tony best and Steve, the man who tried very hard to do better than tolerate him.

They could be honest in an empty room. 

“That,” Pepper said pointing a finger in whatever direction she felt Sokovia was, “isn’t what I asked you to do.”

“I misread the situation,” Steve said.

Pepper just shook her head. She clenched her jaw, she looked at the door, at the floor, at the wall, and when she thought she could stomach it, she looked back at him. “And what are you going to do about it? They have Tony in a jail cell? In the basement? Those rooms are meant for _criminals_.”

“I just woke up,” Steve said. He’d taken a minute to look at his pretty multi-colored face in the mirror. There were still red streaks in the whites of one of his eyes. His head didn’t hurt, his body wasn’t aching, but it was heavy when he moved it. (Food would probably help in curing the lethargy that was making living difficult.) “I don’t know what—”

“You don’t know?” Pepper repeated, “you’re the _leader_ of the Avengers.”

“I was in a coma,” Steve said.

“Whose fault was that!” Pepper shouted the words at him. There was no question in them. It was fear, stripped bare and ugly, quivering in her voice. Because Pepper had asked him to go, and Happy had led Tony right to him. They were active participants in betraying the man who wasn’t even here. 

Steve sighed, “I miscalculated,” he said again.

Pepper shook her head, and cleared her throat. Her fingers brushed at tears that were gathering at the corner of her eyes. “So what next? Is she being held as a criminal? She is the only connection we have to our Tony—”

“She’s not a criminal.”

“We can’t get Tony back without her,” Pepper said.

“I know,” Steve said. He pulled a chair out because it was sit or collapse. Pepper was outraged that he could sit at a time like this. (He’d sat through worse things, and slept through even worse things.) “I don’t think she can work on that until we figure out how to show that we’re all on the same side.”

“That’ll be hard to do when you’re sitting up here and she’s in a prison cell in the basement.” But something was quivering right behind those words, something was lingering in the hateful stare that Pepper leveled at him. There was a secret that she wasn’t going to tell. “Fix this.”

“I’ll do my best.” If he wanted to point out that he hadn’t asked Tony to attack him, that he hadn’t wanted this outcome, that all she needed to do to avoid this was to not hit him, he reminded himself that he could have hit her back. He could have made it a fair fight, and he hadn’t. 

(Just, he didn’t know _why_.)

# B SIDE

Imagination was a hell of a thing, trying to summon up some peaceful state of mind, thinking of all the many things the world he’d come from was capable of throwing at a man. Not that she was a man. No, the Tony that had replaced him was something of a mythical figure, an invincible heroine of her own story, complete with a doe-eyed lover she’d left behind when she went on to greater adventures. Ms. Stark was undeniably brilliant, undeniably _capable_ , but she was also undeniably _alone_.

Ms. Stark had built a team and a family. She’d built a magnificent tower. She’d built a maze of safeguards. She’d built an empire and filled it with loyal subjects; she’d done it all in the interest of protecting her interests. This world was overflowing with people that were willing to do whatever it took to protect their Tony. (From Natasha’s pity and meanness, to Happy’s stalwart, unflinching presence, to Steve’s aggravated patience. They were all simply waiting for _her_ to return to them.)

There was a Natasha in Tony’s world but she hadn’t recommended him to be part of the Avengers.

There was a Bruce in his world, but there was no telling where he’d gone or what state he was in.

There was a Thor, but not presently on _Earth_. 

There was a Steve but he wasn’t a husband, hardly a friend. (That wasn’t only his fault, but their combined fault. They’d worked hard at keeping one another at odds, always playing a game of one-up-man-ship. A clever constant miscommunication that kept them from ever having to really talk about anything long enough for it to matter. Tony provided tech and money and housing and whatever was needed, Steve provided heroics and a handsome face to slap on newspapers.)

There was a Rhodey, and a Pepper, and a Happy. But they were, like her friends were, primarily loyal to the Tony they knew. 

Tony could have sat and thought of a thousand things that might have gone wrong. He could have filled the day with listing what was most likely, ranking them in order and arriving at the only logical conclusion, the one that Happy had been hinting at days before. 

Ms. Stark and Steve Rogers had come to a disagreement. (Tony couldn’t say how he knew, or that he knew, but that it felt _right_ in the way very few things did.) Whatever she’d done, however that confrontation had played out, she had been utterly and entirely removed. Through her own doing, or someone else’s, she had shut down.

Jarvis interrupted his failed attempts at meditating to announce, “Colonel Rhodes is approaching, sir.” Just before the lab door opened and Rhodey himself walked in. He was jetlagged and lagging, turning the corner with more urgency than was necessary and only barely managing to unwind the tension in his shoulders when he looked at Tony sitting cross-legged in front of the couch. 

“Yes?” Tony asked without getting up.

“Pepper thinks your déjà vu idea is shit,” Rhodey announced. (Such announcements hardly required a man to cross from one coast to another just to say it. There were telephones that worked just as well.) “She doesn’t understand it.” (Well, neither did Tony.) “And I don’t either. But I also can’t explain why I’m here. Yesterday, I ignored it. This _feeling_ that I needed to find you, to see you—I convinced myself I wasn’t going to give in. It’s stupid. But here I am.”

Tony nodded along.

“So, can you feel her?” Rhodey was a practical man, dressed in practical clothes, living a practical life. He did practical things, he lived sensibly and morally. All he asked for in return for the constant service he’d given in his life was that things made sense, that things remain practical. 

“It comes and goes.”

“Right now?”

Tony ran his tongue across his lips to buy himself a few seconds. (For what? His answer wouldn’t change no matter how long he put off the question.) “No. I haven’t felt anything in a couple days.”

This was a nonsensical situation to be in. Rhodey wasn’t going to curse at him; not for lack of wanting to, but because there was nothing that could be accomplished by it. Instead, he cleared his throat and he shifted his stance, and he nodded his head. “That’s not ideal,” was meant to convey the fear, and the anger, and the _loss_ that was vibrating in Rhodey’s voice. “Steve told me about,” Rhodey’s fingers danced awkwardly in the air, “that you had not already been aware of your parents’—”

“Murder,” Tony suggested.

“Yes,” Rhodey agreed, “how are you?”

Tony shrugged. “I think, its better for all of us if I keep trying to figure out how to get back.” Especially for her, alone in a world devoid of the friends she was used to having. And for Happy who couldn’t quite bring himself to get out of bed. And for Rhodey who was nodding at nothing at all, just taking space to perform actions to keep _moving_ for fear of something worse. “What does it feel like for you?”

“It feels,” Rhodey looked down at his hands, let those words marinate in the quiet of the lab, and then managed, “it feels awful. It feels like—when I was looking for her, after the convoy attack, when they told me that I was risking my career to recover a corpse. They always said that—everyone said that she was dead. Or that the best outcome was that she had died, that we should all hope that she went quickly so they hadn’t had very long to—” Rhodey waved those words away. “But, I didn’t believe them. For weeks, and then for months, I didn’t believe them. Until the very end, until I started to believe them. Until everyone stopped telling me that I was crazy, not because they believed me, but because there was no other way to say it. Everyone had accepted Tony was dead, and I couldn’t prove she wasn’t. That’s what it feels like, as if I’m holding my breath, as if I’m trying to talk myself into believing she’s still alive and still waiting to be rescued.”

“If she needs to be rescued,” Tony said, “my Rhodey would do what he could.”

That wasn’t a comfort to either one of them, but Rhodey was nice enough to nod his head. “I’ll let you get back to,” he gestured at the nothing happening in in the lab, “work.”

# A SIDE

Steve had considered gathering the others. He had considered a town hall, an open forum, a safe place for unhappy conversation. He’d mulled it over while he ate half his weight in whatever he found in the kitchen cabinets. There were pros and cons to letting everyone have their say—

The pros that they had said it, and that it wouldn’t fester and boil just beneath the surface.

The cons being that everyone’s position on the matter at hand had already been made abundantly clear and that Steve had no real intention in letting those positions stop him from doing what he had already planned.

Moving forward required this new Tony to trust them, at very least to trust them enough to work with them. It her to see that there was nothing insidious in this world, nothing for her to fight against. (But there must have been, because she had come into this world fighting.) Steve could convince himself this was all in the name of _moving forward_. It was all part of a larger plan to get their own Tony back.

But was standing by the stove, watching hamburgers sizzling in the frying pan, thinking about how she’d said,

 _Do you still believe in God, Steven_?

It kept following him, day in and day out. It kept nagging at him right as he fell asleep, and poking him in the ribs when he woke up. He found himself trying to work it out while he was walking through his day. 

Two weeks ago, he had believed in a divine power. Or he had simply accepted that he was expected to. Steve Rogers was Captain America was an Old Fashion American was a Great Man, and great old fashioned American men believed in God. Not Thor, the god of thunder and intimidatingly large arms but _God_ the only one, the singular. 

“She put you in a coma,” Natasha said (again, as if he might have forgotten). She was leaning against the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest. “Not in a friendly way.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been put in a friendly coma,” Steve said. He laid the cheese over the hamburgers, wiped his fingers on a paper towel and took his time about turning around to look at her. 

“She broke your arm.”

“I know.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “She belongs in that jail cell, Steve. She’s done nothing since she got here but prove that.”

No, she’d done other things. She’d helped to clear a road in Sokovia. She’d taken the time to skim through Tony’s entire catalogue of inventions. She’d watched the news footage. She’d offered him what passed for an olive branch when she handed him the schematics. She’d fiercely and violently protected (herself) Tony from past, present or future harm. 

And she’d stirred shit that hadn’t needed to be stirred. She’d started fights that hadn’t needed to be started. 

She’d looked him in his face, and she’d smiled with all her bare white teeth, like she wanted to rip his throat out. She’d looked at him in a way that their Tony never had. 

“I don’t know why I’m wasting my time.”

“I can handle myself,” Steve said.

Natasha just shook her head. She pushed away from the wall. “If you let her out, I’m done. I’m not saving your ass again.” 

Steve moved the frying pan from the heat to the cool burner and turned the stove top off. He didn’t sigh but nod his head. “I’ll keep that in mind.” There was simply nothing else to say, so Natasha didn’t stay to bother trying to think up something. 

The kitchen barely had time to appreciate the silence before Hill was walking in to take up the space that Natasha had just abandoned. Steve was fixing a plate of possible toppings, putting his attention into shredding lettuce and arranging tomato slices. 

“You don’t have to hit her,” Hill said, “just don’t let her hit you. I need your face to look presentable for the fundraiser.” 

Steve looked up at her, expecting to see anger and found nothing at all instead. Hill’s entire expression, and her stance, and her voice conveyed nothing at all. It was utterly devoid of any emotion. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Hill nodded. “Don’t forget to take pickles,” she said just before she turned and walked out again.

# B SIDE

Sunsets were beautiful in Malibu.

Years ago, before they were married and after they’d made a habit of making out between missions, they’d sat on the roof together. There was a bruise on her face and two hairline fractures in his ribs. The battle they’d just fought was a still-numb sound in their ears, the Iron Man suit she’d been wearing was a pile of pieces where she’d dropped it and Steve’s uniform was half peeled off. He had blood at the corner of his mouth, she had rubbed-raw knuckles.

The world was full of worries they needed to be worrying about. Between public opinion and comprehensive clean up there was a small army’s worth of work that needed doing. But they were here, because Tony had brought them, because the fight had been fought and won. Because it had been two and a half day’s worth of effort, forty eight hours without sleep and the entire world could _wait_.

Tony smiled when the sun dipped just beneath the horizon. There was a film of tears in her eyes, her hands resting in her lap, her whole body seeming to sigh in relief. 

“It’s pretty,” Steve said.

Tony snorted, looked at him leaning back on his elbows, trying to find some way to arrange his body to ease the ache in his ribs and the sore spots from his head to his toes. She looked at him with sympathy highlighted by the dying sunlight. “You were going to be an artist once, weren’t you?”

“I could have been,” Steve agreed.

Her body shifted, so she wasn’t sitting on her knees but stretching her body out next to his. Her hand was flat against the rooftop, her other one resting on his chest. She was close enough to feel every brush of her body, to feel the whole cloud of warmth radiating through her clothes. “Yet the only word you can think of to describe this view,” she threw her arm out to motion at the whole of the scene, “is _pretty_.”

“I’m tired.”

Tony smiled, and it was as beautiful and as radiant as the dawn. There was nothing on the whole miserable planet that could have kept him from slipping his hand through her hair, from leaning up to kiss her—because she was beautiful: filthy with sweat, and blood, hot and smelling like an eternity in a tight metal prison. Her hair was thick and wet and sticky between his fingers. But she kissed him back with her fingers curling up in the undershirt he hadn’t bothered to peel off yet. 

“I appreciate the gesture, Rogers,” she whispered at him, “but I’ve never been less interested in sex in my entire life.”

Steve laughed, not long, not hard, not loud—because his ribs were aching— “Good. I think this is all I can manage anyway.”

She didn’t lay down but sit back up, look out at the sun falling lower with her hand resting against his chest. The smile slipped off her face, and her cheeks highlighted pink and _hot_. “You ever have those days,” she said, with her throat as raw as razor blades, “where all that’s getting you through is thinking, one more step, and one more breath, and one more minute. All that’s keeping you moving is knowing that the day will end, that you can sleep when it’s done?”

Tony wasn’t half as small as people liked to think she was, she didn’t fold into his body, but curve her body against his when he put his arm around her. He nodded his head and kissed her temple. She sniffled at the setting sun, and he kept her safe until she could sleep.

But that was years ago now.

The Tony that found him on the roof, watching the sunset, wasn’t the woman he loved. But he had found Steve anyway, and shuffled as close as was decent, and sat down. He’d rested his hands in his lap and watched the sun as it went down.

# A SIDE

It was eight-oh-nine (PM) when the door opened again. Tony had given up the pretense of pacing, she’d put her back to a corner that looked reliable and brought a blanket to keep her warm when the recycled air got too cool to tolerate in her paper-thin-pajamas. Moving would have been agreeing to play the game with Natasha; Tony had no interest in participating, no will to entangle herself with the people of this stupid world. 

She was reminding herself of her very good resolutions to _say nothing_ and _do nothing_ but wait for the best opportunity to get _out_. (No she wasn’t, not at all, she was reminding herself to stop putting things like _expectations_ on unknown variables. To stop thinking that Rhodey-was-Rhodey would behaving like _Rhodey_. To stop assuming things about what Steve would and would _not_ allow because her Steve wasn’t this Steve—)

She was preparing herself for anything from shower time to friendly faces, and not even her very best guess involved the smell of fresh cut tomatoes and still-hot-hamburgers. Nothing she had thought up matched up to the way Steve stepped into the room with a bruise on his face, a bag of buns tangling from one hand and a plate of hamburgers in the other. He was wearing his stupid khakis, his stupid button-down shirt, looking back out into the hallway just long enough to nod his head before the door cranked shut again.

“We didn’t have ice cream,” Steve said. He walked just close enough to keep a safe distance between them, crouched low enough to sit down the plate of hamburgers (and lettuce, and pickles, and tomatoes, and onions, and—) and the bag of buns before he stepped back again. He was frowning over gray walls and no windows for a split second and then he put his back against the opposite corner of the room and slid down to sit just like her. “I put cheese on them.”

Nobody had ever accused Steve Rogers of having one single ounce of self-preservation. (In fact, Bucky had accused him of the opposite on more than one occasion.) 

“I don’t believe in God anymore,” Steve said. “You asked me. I don’t.”

Tony closed her eyes, she leaned her head back. She let the unfairness of it roll through her, let it sweep her under and embraced the livid, ugly agony of it. There were tears in the corners of her eyes and a heated, wet tightness in her throat. 

But the smell of hamburgers was torture on her stomach. She thought of that, of how _hungry_ she was and how it made her skin _ache_ until she thought she could speak, and when she cleared her throat, her voice was almost normal. “I’m happy for you,” she said.

Steve nodded. “I thought I did.” He looked at his hands, at the gray floor they were sitting on, at the door that was part of the wall. He sighed (to himself) and said, “I made Happy bring you to me. I told him that if he didn’t, we would—”

Tony laughed like a cough, wiped the tears away from her lashes and leaned far enough to get her fingers on the edge of the plate and drag it closer to her. “You’re a really fucking awful liar, Steven.” The hamburgers were still hot, dripping enough grease to seem promising about the taste and her ravenous stomach clenched just at the smell of them. “Happy did what Happy did. Maybe Pepper told him to, maybe she didn’t. Don’t lie to me to spare my feelings.”

“I don’t want you in here,” Steve said. “I didn’t want to fight you in Sokovia.”

The buns were warm and soft. The onions finely sliced, the tomatoes crisp and fresh. The pickles weren’t perfect, but they tasted good enough. “No ketchup?”

Steve shoved his hand into his pants pocket to pull out single-serve packets and threw them across the room to her. “No mustard, I looked but there wasn’t any in the kitchen.” He leaned back into the wall behind him. “You didn’t have to let Natasha electrocute you. You had the suit.”

Tony took a bite of her sandwich, let the richness of the flavor across her tongue take the whole of her concentration. (Spent a second to think of how Steve always had always liked cooking when he had the time and kitchen space.) It was a damn good hamburger, it was fucking fantastic, it was the most beautiful apology food she’d ever been offered, but the man sitting opposite her wasn’t a friend, or a lover, or a husband. He was just looking for answers to questions he hadn’t even thought about asking yet. “You could have hit me back,” she said.

“I could have.”

“What do you want from me, Steven?”

Steve looked right at her, right at her face, he said: “I want to be able to let you out of here.”

Tony took another bite of the hamburger, savored it, and Steve’s aggravation at her not immediately leaping on the offer. She liked letting him stew like that, liked how patient could be when he _really_ wanted something. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t give, he didn’t look away once until she cleared her throat, and licked the lingering taste out of her mouth, and said: “Then open the door.”

Steve frowned at her.

Tony snorted. “You’re a shit liar, and you’re bad at bluffing, but you do make a good hamburger.” She looked up at the blinking red light (and Natasha, undoubtedly, behind it). “Maybe if you come bring me breakfast, make an omelet. Something cheesy with bacon.”

The door clanked, and Steve got back to his feet. He was still looking at her like she was hiding something from him. (And she was. But nothing that he needed to know.) “I do want to let you out.”

Of course he did. She shrugged and took a bite and waited until he walked out of the room. When he was gone, and the locks were all closed again, Tony looked up at the blinking red light on the camera. She stuck her middle finger up at it. (And she thought, how cleverly cruel Natasha was, how expertly she’d created her new form of torture, and how Steve had no god damn idea he was playing right into it.)


	17. Chapter 17

# A SIDE

Steve had not had the benefit of watching the technological advances of the past few decades. He had gone into the ice back before televisions had been a common living room fixture and he’d woken up to a time when you could watch whatever you wanted on a phone that fit in your back pocket. Enough people had asked him how he was doing on _catching up_ with modern life as if it were even possible to digest that period of history that he’d slept through. There was no _catching up_ to the future, there was only living in it. So he was born in 1918, but he was a thirty-year-old laying in his bed just after midnight watching videos on his phone, trying to figure out how to make an omelet. 

It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable of feeding himself; it was just that he hadn’t (yet) been struck by the desire to make an omelet. Maybe it wasn’t even about that, maybe it was because he’d walked out of a cell made of four blank gray walls and left behind the woman he’d intended to free. He’d had every intention of letting her out, he’d gone through the trouble of making hamburgers, he’d listened to the lectures of everyone that felt the need to reiterate that she was dangerous—

And who were they telling? 

Why did Natasha think it needed to be repeated _again_? Why did Hill look at him as if he wasn’t aware of what this Tony was capable of? It had been Steve’s face on the opposite end of this Tony’s fists. It had been his body in the dirt, it was his arm that she’d snapped in two with one quick jerk.

That wasn’t luck.

It hadn’t been _luck_ that she’d showed up more prepared to defeat them than any threat they’d faced _thus far_. Even Loki who came with an _army_ , hadn’t seemed nearly as _capable_ of actually defeating them as this woman had seemed. 

(What had she said, the very first day, when she showed up to the practice field to break his arm? She said, _after I went through all the trouble to make this suit non-lethal_.)

Maybe it was Steve trying to figure out why he couldn’t sleep, while he watched videos on how to make good omelets, while thinking about why he didn’t let out the angry female version of the Tony Stark (he thought that) he knew. That was the part that kept bobbing back up out of the recess of his half-thought-things; how he couldn’t stop thinking about her. About why she’d touched his face after she’d done her best to break it into as many pieces as she could. About why she’d made that little noise under her breath when the suit fell to pieces, about why she had known that Natasha was going to put her in jail—and how she’d simply let it happen.

_Remember Happy_ , said the woman who had recently been betrayed by that very man.

Then, with very little thought put into it, Steve was in the kitchen, following the directions from the phone about how to clarify butter and how hot to make the pan and exactly how to whisk the eggs. (Whisking, he found, was a delicate affair that his brute-strength muscles just weren’t made to do with ease.) He was on his second (failed) omelet, frowning at it’s burnt black back when Sam walked into the kitchen carrying an empty water bottle, wearing clothes he must have been sleeping in, looking sleepy and unhappy about the noise.

“Turn on the vent,” he said. He pointed at the button over the stovetop. “You’re going to set off the fire alarm. Who knows what Stark set up to happen for fire alarms. It’s midnight, man, we don’t need to deal with fire hydrant robots right now.” He yawned with his water bottle pushed up against the ice maker on the fridge, blinking at the plates of failed attempts to combine meat, cheese and eggs into something edible. “What the hell are you doing?” Sam asked.

Steve could have but didn’t want to say _making an omelet_. He didn’t want to say it because Sam knew that she’d sent him away and told him to return in the morning, and because of the lecture he didn’t want to get in return. So, he said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

Sam just stared at him, moved the bottle from the ice dispenser to the water, and only when it was completely full broke eye contact to shake his head. “Are you going to put on your nice shirt with the buttons and those jeans that make your ass look good when you take her breakfast?” He screwed the lid back onto the bottle and set it on the counter, so he could lean against it and properly convey how fed up he was with everything. “Maybe put a nice rose in a vase?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Steve said.

“Oh,” Sam said with absolutely no shock, “am I being ridiculous? I thought that was what we were doing now.”

Steve didn’t know what the fuck he _was_ doing so he couldn’t exactly refute the claim that it was ridiculous. Instead he lifted the pan off the stovetop, so he could scrape the failed egg disaster into the trash. He could have cleaned the pan too, but it seemed just as simple to drop it in as well. (There might not be any chance of salvaging it anyway.) 

“I thought you were going to let her out,” Sam prompted.

“I was.”

Sam looked around the whole kitchen, exaggerating his surprise at finding absolutely no Tony in the kitchen with them. He even lifted his hand up to his forehead to pretend to look around for her in the distance and when he was done, he frowned at him. “You’re _Captain America_ ,” Sam said, “when you want to do something, you do it. Damn the consequences. That’s your whole—” he motioned into the air, searching for a word to pluck to describe what he meant.

“This is different.”

“No, it’s not.” Sam shook his head. “This is no different than any other time you decided you wanted to do something, except that you said you decided and you didn’t do it.” He picked up the water bottle and stepped forward to turn the heat down on the stove. “Maybe you don’t want her out.”

“Why?” Steve asked, “because she hit me?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m going to bed. I’m serious about the jeans, Steve.”

Steve sighed at the stove as he pulled another frying pan down to try again. (But why was he trying, why did it matter?)

# A SIDE

Tony had seen plenty of one AMs in her life. They had been long battles with thick books, stolen overnights with a flashlight and a screwdriver in her Father’s workroom, late-late-nightmares resolved by her Mother’s sweet humming, drunken parties, ill-advised but also exceptionally pleasing sexual encounters, long-long flights, and endless fights and now and again it was just this:

Just the crushing exhaustion fixing her body into place without letting her brain rest. It was trying to add one and two to get three and coming up with six instead. Six didn’t equal one plus two but there was no point in trying to remind herself of that. It wasn’t logic, it was the _feeling_ that the ceiling was going to cave in. It was knowing she was unsafe, because this room was built to contain her, and because the people in charge of her fate were unknown.

Her traitorous mind replayed the fight in slow motion, again and again, playing over the exaggerated sound of her metal fist hitting Steve’s flesh-and-blood-face. Replaying the scatter of the underbrush when he hit the ground on his elbows and knees, replaying how no matter how many times she knocked him down, Steven fucking Rogers couldn’t take a hint.

If she was feeling more fair, if she were feeling generous in any version of the word, she might have been able to admit that Steve’s perseverance was an attractive quality. Even if it wasn’t the right man, it was exactly the same action. 

(Tony wasn’t often generous, she was very rarely fair. That must have been why she’d put Steven into a coma, that must have been why she’d kept hitting him long after he’d stopped putting any effort into doing more than protecting his face. That must have been why it didn’t matter that he was _there to talk_ , because he was a stranger with a loved-one’s face, telling outright lies with a familiar voice.)

The door opened at one-oh-six in the morning, the smell of eggs and bacon was immediate. There Steve stood, holding a platter of omelets, carrying a jug of milk and a jug of juice in the other hand, looking as sure of himself as she felt. (And her husband would find this hilarious, he would laugh for twenty-straight-minutes, gasping for breath between his tears because Steve Rogers were extraordinarily good at taking orders from pretty girls. Tony didn’t consider herself overly pretty but, here he was with omelets just like instructed.) “Rogers,” she said as she sat up, “if you keep this up, people are going to start to talk. All a girl has is her reputation.”

“I can’t open this door from the inside,” said the man who didn’t even look like he could explain why he was there. Said the man who watched the door slide closed. He was wearing a T-shirt and sweats, socks and no shoes. There he stood, making statement with the bruises she’d put on his face and that blinking red light right over his head.

“What do you want from me?” Tony asked. 

Steve stepped forward and held out the platter of omelets. He’d brought plastic silverware and paper plates. “I didn’t know what kind of meat you liked.” (Of course, he didn’t.) He lingered and waited, arm extended, platter of eggs balanced on his fingers, watching her stare him down, and just when his resolved started to turn ugly she reached out and took the platter from him. “I want to talk,” was the first honest thing he might have said to her. Steve set the drinks down by her feet and retreated to his own side of the room. He sat and watched her trying to balance the warm platter on her lap. 

“Did Natasha send you?” she asked. She had one hand on each end of the platter, her legs lifted up by her toes pushed against the ground. The watch Rhodey had given her was wrapped around her wrist and her contraband chalk was under the pillow. 

“Natasha would prefer you stay in this cell.”

Yes, of course she did. Natasha would close the door and forget where the key was. She’d act surprised and apologetic if someone found the body and if not, well, there was no crime without a body. “What do you prefer?”

Steve shrugged. “I want to talk.”

Tony leaned forward and set the platter on the floor, eased off the thin mattress to sit on the floor and dragged the blanket with her. The room got cold at night, (but never dark). “So talk.”

That earned her nothing but Steve searching for what he wanted to say. It was nothing, but his face pinched in concentration, trying to sort out the many things he’d thought to find the one thing he wanted to _say_. He was a man of great thoughts, Captain Rogers, and very few sentences. He expressed himself with motion and action. This quiet didn’t come to him naturally. “Do I believe in God where you’re from?”

“Not the Christian one,” Tony said. She crossed her legs in front of her body, tucked the blanket in under them and folded it around her back so it made a little tent to trap the heat of her body. “You have a lot of faith in Thor, even if there’s been some discussion about what defines a being as a _god_.”

“Do you hate me where you’re from?”

Tony sighed. “No. I don’t hate you, Steven.”

“You broke my arm.”

“You let Bucky turn your face into playdough.”

“Bucky didn’t know who I was at the time.” (There was that reproachfulness, the tone of an old man, sneaking into Steven’s young-man’s voice.) “There’s not a lot of my friends that break my arm.”

“We’re not friends,” she said. “You and I, we aren’t even in the same category as friends.”

“Why?”

Because this Steven wasn’t _her_ Steve. Because this Steven stood by and let the world blame Tony. Because this Steven had invited an enemy and a threat onto the team with no justification. Because this Steven was overwhelmed with free gifts, given thoughtlessly by this Tony, and he couldn’t bring himself to offer the benefit of the doubt. 

Because Jarvis was dead.

Because Malibu was gone.

Because Tony was _alone_ in this miserable world, this crumbling, awful world. She was alone because this Tony was alone because the man who was supposed to make sure they weren’t was too busy using morals to give him excuses to make judgements about things he didn’t have the education to understand.

Or maybe it was because this man had her husband’s face, and her husband voice, and he looked at her with none of her husband’s heart and every minute set looked back at his blank faced stare she could feel the thick, dark void inside of her rip through her guts.

“Because you’re not his friend.”

“We’re in the same category as friends,” Steve said.

“No. You’re in the same category as coworkers. He’s good for showing up and helping you solve problems. He’s A-plus at giving you jets, buildings, suits and weapons when you need them. He can solve technical issues in his sleep and he will if you ask him—but you’re not his friend.” She shrugged. 

Steve narrowed his eyes, picked at his fingernails and cleared his throat, “does he hit you back?”

“Yes,” Tony said, “especially when I’m wearing a metal suit capable of killing him.”

“You let Natasha take you prisoner.”

Tony shrugged. By the time Natasha had showed her face there was more important things to worry about than whether or not she’d end up here. Steve was resilient, but he wasn’t immortal. “I don’t think I had as much of a choice in that as you seem to believe.”

“I don’t want you in here,” Steven said again. “I don’t think this will solve the problem. I don’t think this will get any of us what we want.”

Tony snorted. “What exactly is the problem, Steven?”

Either he didn’t know, or he didn’t want to say. Steven went very still with his back against the opposite wall, with his legs sticking out straight in front of him, with his hands resting against his lap, fingers loosely curled because he’d been picking at lint on his jeans. Tony had already met this man, at this place in his life, years ago now. She’d met him in New York, in an ugly room that SHIELD provided, when they were still attempting to make the Avengers a reality. But it had been years since she’d sat opposite any Steve Rogers who didn’t know how to say what he was thinking.

“Why didn’t you bring the shield with you in Sokovia?”

“It didn’t feel right,” Steve said. He almost shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought—Howard probably wouldn’t have wanted me to use it to beat up his daughter.”

That caught her in the ribs, made her laugh, and the sudden eruption of noise made Steve jump. It startled him into grinning, a reflexive reaction to unexpected situations. “Oh shit,” she said, “Howard wouldn’t have cared.”

“You’re his daughter,” Steve protested.

“I was his _greatest creation_ ,” she countered, “a fact that he didn’t bother to let me know until he was dead. It’s hard to swallow that kind of post-humous affection when the living man didn’t bother to mention it once.” She shrugged it off. “Howard would have called you an idiot for leaving the shield in the jet. You are an idiot.”

“You broke my arm with the shield.”

“I wouldn’t have done it twice.”

“Why would I believe that?”

Tony was _exhausted_. She was _bruised_ from how tired she was. It felt like her head was a hundred pounds, like it was expanding every minute she stayed awake. The room was getting fuzzy, the lines between one feeling and the other were getting blurry. Something like regret was creeping into her throat. “I shouldn’t have broken your arm. Regardless of how minor it was, it was intentional, and it was meant to hurt you.”

Steve looked less surprised when she’d punched him in the forest in Sokovia. (What did that say about this stupid fucking world.) “I— I’m not worried about that.”

No, of course he wasn’t. That’s how she’d justified it. Steve had lived through worse, he’d picked himself up, he’d kept walking through much-much worse. He’d sacrificed more for less reason, but, “I’m sorry,” because she’d hurt him when she was angry, and she had made it justified in her own head. Look at what she’d done since, look at the bruises on his stupid face, look at the room with no windows they were sitting in.

(Look at what happens when you get angry.)

# A SIDE

Steve had come in with a plan: to stay until they had reached some kind of understanding. He expected peace talks, maybe an armistice, but he hadn’t expected to be sitting opposite Tony sounding like she was doing her best not to cry, to watch her and hear her as she said _I’m sorry_.

He simply wasn’t prepared for that. 

Or for the way she snorted, how the blanket she had wrapped all around her body moved with the motion of her shoulders. She was shaking her head, eyes closed, and body slumped. (How long had it been since she’d slept? How long had she been in this ugly room?) “You’re a disaster, Steven. I already did this once.”

“Did what?”

“Put up with you when you were stupid,” she opened her eyes again, concentrated on him. “You never told me what our problem was.”

The problem was that Steve didn’t trust her, that Natasha didn’t, and Sam didn’t, and Hill didn’t trust her. It was that she’d come into this world and she’d attacked before they’d even had the chance to cope with the idea that something like this was possible. They’d been enemies since the first moment, they were enemies now, looking at one another from opposite sides of a jail cell.

The problem was they needed their Tony back. 

The problem was, “Tony built Ultron because he was scared.”

“Mm,” she hummed. “Yes, of course. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the woman that stuck her finger into his ear and stirred up his brain.”

Even if Wanda had aggravated the issue, Tony had been scared of shadows far longer than attacking the last Hydra base in Sokovia. He’d been building his back up plans for years, always created new contingencies for disasters that weren’t likely to happen. “Tony hasn’t been the same since New York.”

“Oh Steven,” she tipped her head back, slid her arms out of the blanket to rub her face and after a moment of exaggerated exasperation, tipped her head down and looked right at him. “Is that the problem? He saw war? It changed him? Is that why you don’t like him? Because he’s not a _soldier_? Because he can’t sleep at night and you can? Because it’s stupid that he’s still afraid of dying in that beautiful black vacuum of outer space and you—what, you’ve already died once, no big deal, stop whining Stark? Is that our problem? That he’s weak?”

No, that wasn’t—that was _not_ what he meant at all.

“Wanda stuck her fingers in your brain and you walked away like it was nothing. She stirred you up and it changed nothing—I think that says something not at all complimentary about you, Steven. You’re not infallible, you’re dying on the inside. You’ve been drinking the kool-aid.”

(That must have been a reference to something.) “I don’t not like Tony because—would you stop talking?” He didn’t like how his voice sounded like that, didn’t like how aggravated it was, how she was smiling at him like nothing he said could prove her wrong. She’d made up her mind about him; she required no evidence. He had no chance to defend himself. “Tony’s not weak.”

“You sure? I’m pretty sure he hasn’t slept in four years.”

“That doesn’t make him weak.”

“Are you sure? You sure that if you take away that suit he’s nothing? You sure you don’t know men that have none of his money, his brains or his ability that are worth ten of him?”

And _how_ had she even known that? “You’re taking things out of context.”

Tony moved then, shoving her body forward. She crossed the space between them in something between a scuttle and a crawl and suddenly she was right in his face. “That’s why you haven’t told him about his parents isn’t it? You keep telling yourself, he’s already got too much too handle. You keep saying that you’re _sparing_ him because he’s _unstable_. You tell yourself he just needs a _break_. You remind yourself that _Bucky_ didn’t do it, that it was the Winter Soldier. You keep saying _he doesn’t need to know, it’s for his own benefit_ don’t you?”

Steve’s hands wrapped around her arms, pushed her backward and held her there. The grip was too tight, but she was pushing back against grip as she spoke, as if she didn’t care about anything as much as she cared about hissing those hateful words. “Yes!” he shouted back. “He can’t handle a nightmare, you think he can handle knowing how his Mother died?”

She went still, relaxed back, sat back on her knees spread across his knees and just shook her head. Her face was pink from exertion, her face was caught up between shock and anger. “He could handle it if he heard it from you,” she said, and she shook his hands off her arms and slid backward.

Things had gotten _off-track_. Steve rubbed his palms down his thighs and cleared his throat, “I haven’t always done the right thing.”

“No shit,” she said.

“Tony does stupid things when he’s scared.” And before she could decide that she wasn’t as sorry about breaking his arm as she thought she was, he put his palm up and said, “he invited a known terrorist to his house. On national TV.”

Every part of her wanted to defend that, but she cleared her throat and shifted so she was sitting flat on the floor again, legs in front of her and she said, “that wasn’t a great choice. I assume you have a point.”

“My point is, you’re Tony. You may not believe that he’s my friend, and maybe he isn’t. Maybe I should have done things differently, but I do know Tony. I know what he does when he’s scared and,” this was the part he didn’t want to say. “You don’t feel safe,” was more neutral than _you’re scared_. 

That made her snort, made her eyes glisten damply as she ran her tongue across her lips. She looked down at the scuffed knees of her prisoner pajamas and then back up at his face. “Well,” was spoken very calmly, “that might be the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say.”

“We all want the same thing. We want our Tony back. You want to go home. So how do we fix this?”

# B SIDE

The night had come but the promised relief had not. The sunset had not resolved anything except the warmth of the sun. Even Tony, sitting a comfortable distance to his left hadn’t managed to touch the weariness that filled up his whole body from top to toes. Steve was simply too tired to fight, too tired to quit, too tired to do anything but follow Tony from the roof to one of the porches. Too tired to care much about anything—

And there was plenty of things to care about. The Avengers on the East Coast down by two leaders and one auxiliary member (since Rhodey was here, quietly clumping together with Pepper and Happy). Tony was lost in an another world, probably lighting the man with his face on fire out of sheer, unanswerable rage. Maybe she wasn’t, maybe she was trying to find her way home (but, most _likely_ not). 

There was this Tony right in front of him, coming up with theories that sounded like insanity about feeling a feeling that felt like an echo from another universe. Steve didn’t like to claim any understanding of how interdimensional travel worked (he often did not argue with Thor about the logistics of such a thing) but the notion of déjà vu being proof of an open connection didn’t make sense.

Or it wasn’t about making sense. It was about maintaining _hope_ and hope was _exhausting_.

“So,” Tony asked from the opposite side of the table. He was drinking (what looked like tea, maybe, hard to tell) out of a tall glass, wearing sunglasses long after the sun had gone down. The porch lights were bright as sunshine, sometimes (or so his Tony told him). “What do you do for fun around here?” He was leaning forward when he said it, straightening up in the seat that was too easy to recline into. “I mean, besides exploding baseballs, and preventing threats, and parties—and, sex.”

“I think that covers most of it,” Steve said. He was smiling when he said it but there was no humor in his voice. “Sometimes we spar.”

“I’m not sure that’d be as fun for me as it is for her.”

“No?”

Tony shrugged, “as much as I like to think I could take Cap in a fight, I don’t think I’d stand a chance if he really believed I deserved to be taken down.” He sipped his tea.

“My wife,” it was important to make sure he kept saying, because the more he said it, the more likely she was to remember to find her way home. (Or, as she was fond of saying, they couldn’t solve every problem until they’d solved the problem in front of them. That problem wasn’t that she wasn’t here, but that _he_ was. So this Tony had an idea about how to fix things and Steve owed it to his wife to believe in this man that had all the same brains the way he would have believed in her.) “Spent six weeks researching how to break my bones. It irritated her that I could fall out of windows and be thrown through walls and,” he motioned at the general nonsense that happened in fights. He’d taken his share of ugly falls and he’d been laid out flat on his back by an enemy more than enough for one lifetime. “Just, get up. She said there was no way to test out her theories, but that she’d most likely figured out exactly how to break every bone in my body.”

“You know,” Tony started, “the more you tell me about your wife, the more confused I am about why you married her. This woman told you she could break every bone in your body—and you—how does that work for you?”

Steve shrugged. “We weren’t very good friends at the time. What I mean to say is, if it came down to a fight, a real fight—and it was you or me, there’s even odds which one of us is walking away from it.” (That wasn’t quite true, because Tony had a suit with countless, unknown methods of instantly killing an opponent. Steve wanted to believe, always wanted to believe, couldn’t quite bring himself to believe, that he wouldn’t kill anyone unless he had to but there was, thinking it all along the inside of his skull, that if it came down to it: him versus Tony, that he could probably kill her before she’d be willing to try to kill him.)

“I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a comfort,” Tony said.

“We play checkers sometimes,” Steve said, but he wanted to say that Tony didn’t think enough of himself. That seemed like a battle that couldn’t be won with a frontal assault. If Steve tried to say it out right (to say, you seem to have forgotten what you _can_ do, what you are _capable_ of) that he’d be rebuffed. It would have been a stupid fight to have after dark. 

“Checkers?”

“Sometimes, she even wins.”

Tony snorted. “Now you’re telling me you’re a secret checkers genius?”

“We all have to be good at some things. You’ve got engineering, math, charm and the unnecessary ability to be able to wear T-shirts to black tie dinners without anyone saying anything—”

“That’s not a talent, that’s just money.”

“—and I can run fast and play checkers.”

Tony was staring at him from across the table, squinting behind his glasses, working out what was happening like it could be quantified in numbers. “Ok,” he said, “lets go inside. You make something to eat, we’ll play checkers.”

That sounded just like his wife, making him promises for remembering to accomplish basic life tasks. Drink water, eat enough, brush your teeth first thing in the morning. Steve nodded, and Tony nodded back.

# A SIDE

The room was too cold. The night had gone on too long.

Tony reached back to pull the blanket up off the ground. She wrapped it back around her body as she slid back to lean against the solid raised platform of her prisoner’s bed. It provided minimal relief from the chill but maximum relief from the sensation of being watched too closely. She felt herself shrugging, like an echo of a motion she’d already completed. “I have no reason to trust you, you have no reason to trust me.”

Steven nodded. He drew in a breath and let it out again. “You _could_ have killed me. You could have killed all of us.”

That was the mistake this world seemed to make over and over again; the same one they made in her world. The assumption of their own safety until proven otherwise. Tony hadn’t even taken a moment to consider that there would be terrorists brave or stupid enough to attack her house. (And the location of her house was the world’s most open secret, never quite mentioned by address despite how everyone knew where it was.) The Avengers’ tower was not impervious to attack. The _Avengers_ were not immortal beings. Most of them were human; perhaps only Bruce truly invulnerable. “That assumes that I benefit from your death,” she said. “There’s not many people in the world I’ve wanted dead.”

“Have you killed many people?”

She was too tired for this. “Personally?”

Steve nodded.

“I didn’t count them. It gets fuzzy, how to count the dead. Do I count the ones that died because of injuries sustained in a fight? Do I count the ones that died as a result of my instructions? Do I just count the ones that I killed outright? How many people have you killed?”

Steve shrugged, “a lot. I don’t know. I don’t like that I don’t know, but I don’t know. This isn’t what I wanted.” He paused when she opened her eyes (when had she closed them) to focus on him, “I don’t mean this,” the room, the situation, her, “I mean, when I tried to enlist, this isn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to kill people. I didn’t want to become this thing. I just wanted to do my part, to help people.”

“You didn’t want to die an irrelevant sick man settling for what you had,” Tony said. She opened her eyes again (when had they closed?) and sat up straight. 

“Yes,” Steve agreed. “You can sleep. Nobody will be here until the morning.”

That was the hell of it. She could sleep, she could lay on the cold concrete and sleep like a baby because Steve had taught her to sleep again, taught her that she was safe next to him, that she could be still while the world moved and wake up all in one piece. He’d made her promises with his constant presence that her body had taken as fact. It didn’t matter to any part of her that this Steven wasn’t her Steve because his face, his voice, his body were all the same. “We weren’t friends either,” she said with her eyes peeled open. “You and me? When we met. I hated you for every minute of my life that my Father couldn’t love me. He collected your biographies. He bought up all the memorabilia. He loved you. I hated your stupid face as soon as I saw it for myself.”

“How did you fix it?” Steve asked.

Tony let her head fall back, tried to shake herself awake and only succeeded in moving the blanket to let the cold in. That was shocking enough to startle her awake for a second, to concentrate on what Steven had asked. “I asked him to trust me, he decided it was worth a shot. Of course,” she yawned, “at that point I had not broken his arm. Or,” she circled her finger at her face. “This.”

“How long has it been since you slept?”

Tony shrugged. “A few days, maybe. I don’t know. A couple weeks.”

# B SIDE

“You know that you’re dreaming,” Pepper said. Her voice was off-center, not quite right, but familiar enough. (Like the Pepper that belonged in this universe, who had the same face and the same voice, and looked at him like they were total strangers nonetheless.) She was sitting on his lap, wearing the sports bra-and-pants combination that had haunted his hindbrain dreams since 2012. Her hands were resting against her own thighs on either side of his waist. 

(Tony thought, he’d very much like to touch her, to feel the smoothness of her skin, to walk his fingertips up her belly, to run his fingers through her hair, to wrap his arms around her and press his face against her body. Pepper-was-shelter, was sorely missed, was sitting on his lap, all on display and untouchable.)

“You’re always dreaming when I’m dressed like this,” she said. (And what a bitch his dreams could be, always poking holes in his fantasies.) She moved one of her hands, slid it up his chest and over his shoulder so it was pressed against the couch under his back. She was leaning over him, her long-long hair falling like a curtain, closing them off from the world beyond.

(The entire world being the sensation of being too cold, and the congealing smell of eggs.)

“Concentrate, Tony,” she said. 

“I am.” He was, concentrating on how the heat of her body was the only thing keeping him warm. On how her skin was blushing just under the surface, about how her eyes seemed to get brighter the longer she looked at him. He was concentrating on much he wanted to touch her, and how he couldn’t seem to move his arms and how he couldn’t seem to feel his hands. “What am I concentrating on?”

Pepper’s smile was backlight orange, her arms were glowing with heat, and she pulled back, shook her hair behind her back. She was like a sun in his lap, getting brighter the longer she smiled. 

“No,” he said but his body wouldn’t work. “No, I fixed this.”

“Concentrate, Tony.”

“I _am_ ,” didn’t do a single damn thing to dim the growing light beneath her skin. The heat was steam rolling off her skin, but the room was freezing fucking cold. He tried to move but his arms were lead. The best he could manage was the sensation of his fingertip catching on the stretchy black pants she was wearing. “Pepper.”

Her face was a blur of light, but he could see her smile. He could feel her hand touch his face, the tip of her overheated finger trace his mouth. “Don’t you miss me, Tony? Don’t you miss me?”

Tony woke up in time with a great clap of noise, an explosion that started as a hiss and a pop, and it spread out over his whole body so that he woke up covered in a sweat, screaming _Pepper_ into the empty living room around him. There was nobody—nothing, except a scatter of checkers on the glass table and the last move of the game still sitting on the board. 

There was no Steve, no Pepper, no Happy but there was Jarvis, “shall I call Ms. Potts, sir?”

“No,” Tony gasped. He was sitting up on a couch he didn’t remember falling asleep on, pressing his fist against his chest as his heart raced-and-raced. His head hurt from the rush of blood coursing too quickly through his veins. “God,” he mumbled to himself, pressed his face against his palms. “Concentrate, concentrate—what the fuck am I supposed to be concentrating on?” 

He tried breathing, like the videos on the internet told him would help. He tried focusing on nothing but his own breath and all that got him was the sensation of suffocating because he was putting so much attention into it he had simply stopped breathing.

“Jarvis,” he gasped, “make a note in the Kansas file—it started.” 

This, _this_ wasn’t _him_. This ugly, unsatisfied, spiteful thing creeping through his chest. This crushing, suffocating sensation of being so close and being so unable to touch the person he loved wasn’t _him_. 

Tony shoved his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Welcome back,” he mumbled to himself, “what are you looking for?” His brain wasn’t half as categorizing and analyzing emotions as it was processing objective information. He was half a step behind this feeling, trying to catch up to what the other Tony was doing, or feeling, or _wanted_. It wasn’t acid, but it wasn’t _pleasant_.

“Steve,” he whispered, and then looked toward the stairs. “Jarvis, where is Steve?”

“Captain Rogers is in your bed, sir.”

Tony was on his feet faster than he could reconsider how stupid it was to invite himself into a bedroom that wasn’t his. He would have had to have been an oblivious and stupid man to ignore the obvious. The last time this thing had gotten it’s claws into him it had been screaming for relief, for _Steve_ through every single nerve ending in his body. 

That had been a battle cry, an all-consuming fire of agony and rage, and Tony had lost her in the aftermath. She had simply stopped transmitting anything but a cold shoulder. Now she was back, reaching out through Pepper’s overheated hands, looking for something wearing the face of the woman that Tony loved.

And well, that didn’t take a great feat of intelligence did it? It didn’t require deep intellectual thought to imagine what she was looking for _right now_ , what she couldn’t find in Tony’s universe. 

Steve was sleeping when Tony opened the door. He was still fully dressed, half covered with a blanket, hugging his wife’s blanket against his chest. Tony didn’t tip-toe but walk as softly as he could manage it. He eased the door closed after him, and stood there in the space between the bed and the door, working out what he was meant to do.

Instinct had brought them this far. Her searching fingers reaching through space and reality had gone quiet as soon as he stepped inside the room. There was no relief, just quiet. Tony stepped out of his shoes, crept close enough to pull the blanket half-covering straight so it covered the whole of him from shoulders to feet.

There he was, with no better ideas, brushing the hair out of Steve’s face. There he was, holding his breath, watching the man’s tight-desperate grip on the blanket ease at the touch of Tony’s hand. There he was, unprepared for how it felt to watch the man relax under the blanket, to hear Steve whisper, “I love you too,” into the blanket he was clutching.

It wasn’t relief. 

Tony didn’t answer, he retreated, to the glass wall, to sit so he could watch Steve sleep.

# A SIDE

Steve was holding his breath.

Tony had slouched against the bed five minutes ago, two minutes ago she’d shaken herself awake just long enough to peel her eyes open, a minute and a half ago she’d said, “I don’t want to sleep,” like she meant _while you’re here_ , and thirty seconds ago her eyes had closed as she said, “don’t mess this up, Rogers.”

The directive might have been easier to follow if he had any idea exactly what he was trying not to mess up. It felt like they were playing two different games on the same field (and despite that, it felt like she was still winning). He crossed his legs and rubbed the chill settling on the backs of his arms. How cold must it be in this stupid room for him it to make _him_ uncomfortable. There she was with nothing but the paper-thin prisoner pajamas and a whisper thin blanket, trying to capture enough heat to sleep.

No matter the problems he had with Tony (and if he were honest, if he could be honest here with nobody to see, he had plenty of problems with Tony), this was never what he had wanted to happen. Even _this_ Tony, even after the damage she’d inflicted, even after the unique challenges she’d created, he still would not have wanted to have her _here_. 

That just left the matter of exactly he had wanted—from her, from the Tony he was more familiar with. It left him trying to figure out exactly what he’d felt in that room, observing the death of a thing he couldn’t have sworn was ever _alive_. Tony had looked at the scattered bits of light and seen the death of something he loved, but the disaster of Jarvis’ murder hadn’t meant anything to Steve. Whatever Jarvis was, he hadn’t been _alive_. Living things required hearts, and souls, and—

No, Steve was trying to figure out exactly what he’d felt in that lab, trying to be fair about what had happened and find out that this new threat was something Tony had created. It was something he’d been trying to build behind their backs. (Of course it was, of _course_ it was because Tony-was-Tony-was-smarter than any of them, or all of them. Or most of them.) 

_That_ feeling had felt justified, well-deserved.

Tony deserved to be blamed for what he’d done. Tony deserved to have Thor’s hand around his throat, to have the whole of them watching and doing nothing.

Because Tony hadn’t trusted them to understand what he was doing. He hadn’t tried. He’d picked out the only person he knew would listen to him, and he’d manipulated him into agreeing and that was that was absolute truth.

(Or it wasn’t.)

Steve sighed, at the cold, the four-blank-walls, at the way this new Tony was sliding downward in her sleep. He watched her wilt to the ground with nothing but her own arm to cushion her head. She was curling as tight as she could into ball, looking for warmth she wasn’t going to find in this stupid room.

Steve wanted Tony to behave. (No, he didn’t. No, he wanted Tony to obey. There was a difference between good behavior and good obedience. Because Steve could behave himself but he’d never been terribly good at obeying.) Steve wanted Tony to stop making noise. He wanted things to be simple. He wanted things without spectacle. 

He didn’t want to have to think about what he thought about Tony; about how he’d been standing off center to Tony’s steady decline. About how they’d all known that Tony wasn’t exactly right, about how he’d built himself an army and he’d blown it up damn the consequences. They hadn’t batted an eyelash when they found out he’d taken out the arc reactor. They hadn’t been surprised when he’d tried to make a shield and built a weapon instead.

Maybe Steve had excuses, and other worries, and other priorities, and things in his life he cared more about than he’d cared about Tony.

They weren’t friends.

Steve sighed again and pushed himself up onto his feet. He stepped forward, and he said, “I’m going to pick you up,” even though she was sleeping. Because she hadn’t wanted to sleep and she wouldn’t want him to touch her, maybe. Certainly not when she had no say in it. But he couldn’t leave her on the ground like that, face down on the cold concrete. He slid his arm under her body at the shoulders. He was prepared for anything but the instinctive way she moved closer to his chest, for how her arm hooked around his neck, for how she made that sound again, that little-tiny-noise under her breath. He lifted her just far enough to lay her onto the mattress. He tucked the blanket back around her shoulder.

Over his shoulder, there was a blinking red light and behind that a person watching a video feed from the camera. Steve turned far enough to look up at it. “Bring her real clothes, and a real blanket.”

It was ten-or-fifteen minutes before the door opened. He expected Natasha, but it was Hill, looking surly and tired, holding out a blanket that had been stripped off one of the empty beds in the empty rooms of the compound. In the other hand she was holding a pair of jeans and a long sleeve button-up shirt that might have been taken out of his closet. “This is your plan to get her to trust us?”

Steve took the blanket and laid it over Tony. It was thick enough to cut through the chill of the room. He laid the clothes on the floor by her bed and went back over to the doorway. “It’s the best plan I’ve got.” He glanced out into the hallway, found it empty and dim. “The door stays open. She’s not our prisoner anymore.”

“What happens if she decides to attack again?” Hill asked.

“She won’t,” Steve said. 

Hill didn’t want to waste her time telling Steve that he was naïve, so she settled for shrugging it off and retreating back toward the elevator at the end of the hall. Steve waited in the doorway, working out if it was better or worse to stay and wait. In the end he stayed inside, back against the opposite wall, watching how Tony slowly relaxed under the blanket. The cold was eased, she stretched, and she sighed in her sleep.

# A SIDE

The first sensation was _warmth_ but that wasn’t synonymous with comfort. The second, third, fourth sensations were all aches, all pains, all little cricks and tight spots in her muscles from laying still too long on too flat a surface. Her back hurt, her upper arms were sore, her shoulder was red-hot pain. 

(That’s what Tony got for sleeping too hard, for putting pressure on that burn and not being conscious enough to recognize it was starting to hurt.)

The fifth sensation was the realization of a blanket that hadn’t been there the night before. It was thick, and soft under her palms. It was heavy on her body, keeping out the chill that had consumed the room in the overnight hours. There was too much light in the room, she had to blink out of her eyes before she could concentrate on the open door. Tony sat up too quickly, her back objected mightily. The blanket slid with her legs off the side of the bed, and she only barely kept from stepping right onto Steve’s stupid stomach. The man was sleeping on his back with one arm under his head and the other laying loosely at his side. 

The sixth sensation was a confusing mesh of _anger_ , and _confusion_ , the sort of feeling that she reserved for her husband. That sensation of how very much he annoyed her with his basic decency because she wanted to be angry at him, but there he was sleeping on the floor.

There he was following through on his word (at last). There he was: completely defenseless, sleeping at the bedside of a woman he had no reason to trust. 

Steven had put her in the bed the night before and she wanted to be angry about his hands on her, but it was hours and _hours_ later. The headache that had been making her head as heavy as bricks was replaced with a gross taste in her mouth and the cloudy confusion of having slept too long. But she’d slept. 

Oh hell, she’d slept like she hadn’t since she woke up in this stupid world. She’d slept because he’d been there. (And she really, really wanted to hate him for that. For smelling the same, and looking the same, and sounding the same when he wasn’t the _same_.) She could have kicked him in the stomach, and he would have accepted that he deserved it for touching her while she was asleep. Or she could step out beyond his lax body, she could shrug the blanket off and drape it over him instead. She could pick up the clothes he’d piled just out of reach, the jeans and shirt that were meant for her. 

Tony kicked off her prisoner pants to pull on the jeans, but she slid the shirt on over the other one. The stack of dishes he’d brought were all piled by the door, all the eggs still sitting on them. The juice and milk were there as well, she ducked low enough to pick up the juice as she rounded the open door and came face to face with Sam slouching in a chair, playing a game on his phone, looking as disinterested as possible in the hallway, the prison cell and _her_ in particular.

They looked at one another. Sam turned his phone over, so it was face-down on his lap and she finished unscrewing the lid of the orange juice, so she could take a drink. It was just slightly too warm to be very good, but it was better than the slightly bitter water she’d been drinking for the past two days. 

“He believes this is the right thing to do,” Sam said after a pause. “He thinks we should trust you.”

Of course, he did. Steven Grant Rogers could grab reality in both hands and bend it to fit; he could make enemies as trustworthy as allies just through sheer power of will. It was his specialty, up on a soap box, inspiring apathetic men to greatness. 

Sam got to his feet, picked up the chair he’d been sitting on and moving it across to rest against the side of the hallway. He slipped his phone into his pocket. “Please be trustworthy,” he said.

Tony didn’t want to be anything this world wanted from her. She wanted to be anything but what they thought she should be. (And where had that gotten her, screaming at and fighting against everything she saw in this terrible place?) 

(What had her husband said to her, what did he repeat again and again. We have to _try_.)

“How long has he been sleeping?” Tony asked.

Sam looked at his watch, “about five hours.” Then he let his arm hang down at the side. “He wants us to trust you, so I’m going to leave. The door’s that way,” he pointed down the hall. “The code is your birthday, I guess. I had to look it up, I didn’t know it, and Natasha only said ‘Tony’s birthday’.”

Tony just nodded along. 

Sam hesitated, then nodded, then started walking away.

She looked back into the room, and then down the hallway, shook the bottle of juice and sighed to herself. “Sam!” she shouted before he got very far away.

“What?” echoed back down the hallway.

“When’s the last time this idiot ate something?” She screwed the lid back onto the juice bottle and set it on the chair. Sam was walking back down the hallway, shrugging off the question. “If I give you the name of a restaurant and an order will you call and have them deliver? If you don’t have access to the spending account, have Hill or Pepper authorize the payment. I’m sure they’ve got clearance.”

“This is the first thing you’re going to do?” Sam asked.

“Give me your phone,” she said. “I’ll make you a list.”

“Why?” 

“Because it’s a long list and you won’t be able to remember it all.”

“Why are you ordering food?” Sam repeated.

Because Steven was as stupid as his smarter counterpart. Because he was three-four years behind on development, because the Tony that lived in this world had never followed him around yelling at him about how healing was nothing when you didn’t feed your body what it needed to thrive. There was a difference between survival and living; a difference that this Steven seemed to be able to constantly narrowly avoid having to learn. “I spent six months and almost a million dollars figuring out exactly what sort of nutrition Steve Rogers required to reach his fullest potential. This is his recovery diet—it’ll help him.”

Sam pulled his phone back out of his pocket and handed it over. “So, this isn’t his full potential?”

“Not hardly,” she answered. Rather than trying to find a memo pad on the phone she just opened a new text and started listing the necessary foods and portions. When she finished she handed it back to Sam who whistled at the screen. “When it gets here, we’ll wake him up.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> life has been a large pile of offal this past (three, has it been three??) weeks. i apologize about the delay.

# B SIDE

The nightmare was pastel bubbles and soft brush strokes. The bathroom an out of focus sentimental art installment, everything just slightly too indistinct from the thing next to it. Oh, but the perfect shimmer of the bubbles floating across the clear water. Just barely visible through the peaks of iridescent soap bubbles was the rough-blue-uniform he was still wearing. The tendrils of filth-and-blood leaking off the joints.

The perfect porcelain tub interrupted by the knobby knuckles of his gloves, the polished white floor marred only by the watered-down smears his boots had left. Maybe beyond the brilliant white light of the scene there was a mountain of bodies, the whole history of men he’d killed sprawled out in the dirt. But here, it was his wife’s imperfect skin, her constellation of little scars artfully covered by conveniently placed bubbles. He couldn’t _feel_ her through the gloves, couldn’t _feel_ her while he was wearing the Captain American costume. But she was there, leaning back against his chest, head tipped back to rest on his shoulder as she held one of his hands up between both of hers.

“You couldn’t do it,” she said as she pulled his arm, as she pressed his palm against the fragile base of her neck. Her voice was just out of sight, just at the bottom of his ear when he wanted to see her face more than he wanted to understand what she was saying. “You don’t have it in you, Rogers.”

“You have no idea what I’ve got in me,” he said. 

“Don’t I?”

His fingers were tightening, her voice was getting hoarse.

“I’ve seen evil men, Steve.” Her voice was barely a whisper now, choked with what little breath she could manage to drag in. She wasn’t struggling anymore, her hands weren’t clawing at his arm, she was just laying there, with her hands cupped around his arm. She’d given up, she was going to die just to prove him wrong. “You don’t have it in you.”

Steve woke up in the real world, to the sound of sheets ripped in half and the sudden shift of gravity around him. He must have been laying down, must have been sleeping on her side of the bed but he woke up halfway to his feet with two fists wrapped up in defenseless bedsheets. He woke up just in time to see the Tony that wasn’t his wife looking up at him from across the room.

“Why are yo—”

“She—It came back, the déjà vu.” Tony was a catastrophe in progress. A undeniable example of a Stark meltdown reaching critical state and soon (very, very soon now), the radiation would start leaking into the water supply.

Tony’s catastrophes were always misleading things; always devoid of bright lights and loud sounds. They were private, little things, always happening around corners and behind locked doors. She made a habit of talking to herself in abandoned rooms, of hiding when there was nothing but people willing to help.

“You can feel her?” he asked.

“No. Not exactly—not anymore. Your wife,” he coughed something like a laugh, pushed his elbow against the glass behind him so he could get to his feet, “let me tell you something about your wife. She’s a real bitch,” carried no real weight. There was a bit of infliction on that last word. (And why not, maybe at least some of the time it was true.) “She’s a god damn oil tanker and I’m,” he lifted his hand, “wooden spoon. She’s controlling everything—me. You, probably. She’s controlling the Avengers in this world and she’s— She’s—”

“Stubborn,” Steve suggested.

“No.”

“Obstinate?”

“No.”

“Willful? Unyielding?” 

“I’m sorry,” Tony said with his eyes narrowed and his mouth pulled into a frown, “are you _purposefully_ listing synonyms? Give me a new word, Rogers.”

“Difficult,” Steve said.

Tony sighed. He scrubbed his hand through his hair and let it drop again. His body seemed to sag while standing straight upright. “Three hours ago, she woke me up with this feeling—this feeling that I had to—had to,” he shook his head, raised his hand, motioned at Steve’s whole body, “she wanted you, I assume. And its gone now. She can get across this divide, she can make her feelings very clear, but I can’t get through to her.”

“Do we want to?”

“I don’t know.”

Steve sighed too, dropped the sheets he’d ripped to pieces and thought of how it might have been nice if he’d gone to sleep wearing a shirt. Not that it mattered, not that Tony hadn’t seen him shirtless before, just that he’d prefer to have this sort of conversation with as many layers of armor protecting his body as possible. His hands found their way to his waist, he looked sideways at the open door and then back at the man just waiting to be told he was crazy. “Happy feels it too,” he said.

Tony nodded.

“Does it go both ways for him? Maybe it doesn’t go both ways for anyone.” Maybe it didn’t even go one way across for everyone. Steve hadn’t felt one single thing since he woke up to a husband instead of a wife that he would count as coming from anywhere but inside his own body. (And what must that even feel like? To be possessed by a feeling that wasn’t yours? To be up to your ears in the sort of anger that Tony could produce on a bad day?)

“I haven’t asked,” Tony asked. “I mean, it’s Happy. He’s not,” and he stuttered there, across all the words he didn’t want to say about his friend, “science minded,” was a gentle way of saying a much less gentle idea.

“She wanted me?” Steve asked.

Tony nodded. 

“And you think if you can get her to notice this,” whatever was happening, “déjà vu that it’ll help get her back here?”

“No, I don’t know what to think. This isn’t about thinking. I didn’t _think_ , I guess I want to go watch Steve Rogers sleep for three hours. But here I am, making sure you’re sleeping because someone I haven’t even met that has a life that’s a lot like mine misses you so much it’s making my _teeth_ hurt. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this—all I know is it _feels_ important.” 

(A genuine catastrophe in motion.)

Steve nodded, “she’s like you. She is you. Maybe you can feel what she’s feeling because—” (You’re not in the same danger she is, because you’re among friends, or what counted as friends when you woke up in opposite world. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of personality, but _need_.) 

“Because,” Tony prompted

“She doesn’t feel safe where she’s at.”

Tony snorted at that, like an almost laugh, like an echo of a real smile on his face. “Cap, if you knew half of what she woke up in, you wouldn’t worry so much about my feelings.”

“It’s not going to be easy to distract her if that’s the case,” Steve said. “But, if that’s what we need to do, we need to talk to the real experts.”

“I’m sorry, I thought that’s what you were. You’re her husband.”

He was but he was a brand-new addition to Tony’s life. Their relationship was measured in years and there were enough people in this world that measured in decades that it would be dangerously arrogant to assume he knew best. “That’s why I know, if you want to get through to her, you go the real experts. We’ll start with Pepper.”

# A SIDE

Steve woke up with more blankets than he’d fallen asleep with. The floor hadn’t changed—still as hard and as cold as it had been the night before—but the blankets were a definite improvement. The gray walls and the looming ceiling did nothing to help him figure out what time of day it was, how long he’d slept or what had happened while he was unconscious. Looking sideways, finding Tony sitting with her back against the wall, wearing the jeans and shirt he’d brought her, sipping coffee out of a travel mug and reading something off a tablet did nothing at all to assist either. 

“What time is it?” he asked.

She looked at her watch without bothering to look at him. “About one in the afternoon, Steven.” Then she looked up, “how guilty do you feel about what happened in Sokovia? I know that you are not going to let them put you back in that spandex onesie because you suddenly feel bad about how the media is treating Tony.”

“What are you reading?” Steve asked. He pulled himself up to sit on the edge of her prisoner bed (not much more comfortable than the floor) and rubbed his face to loosen up the thick-glue-feeling of being frozen in a single moment. 

“The media campaign that Hill put together,” Tony said. She tucked it under her arm and got up to her feet. The open door was spilling fresh light into the room, it wrapped around her like a halo of heavenly light (what a misplaced angel she’d make) as she looked at him with contempt-flavored-concern. “It’s not bad, as these sort of things go.”

“You do a lot of media campaigns where you’re from?”

Tony snorted. “No, I rely on international nostalgia to see me through. Of course, I run media campaigns. I lead an international vigilante group comprised of super powered individuals, the unfortunate majority of which are American citizens. I just prefer to be proactive and this,” she pulled the tablet out to wave it around, “is reactive.”

“You said one in the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

That was absurd. That meant he’d slept for eight hours. He hadn’t slept for eight hours since he woke up from the ice—not on purpose, not because he wanted to. Certainly not on a cold floor being looked after by a woman that had made a very concentrated effort to cave in his skull less than a week ago. Steve shook his head.

“Come on,” sounded almost as affectionate as it sounded fed up with him. “There’s food upstairs. That’ll fix the,” she motioned at her own face, “shaking your head just scrambles your brain. We can’t afford for you to lose any more brain cells.” 

“Can’t you say anything without making it an insult?” he asked.

Tony shook her head without bothering to tell him the obvious and then held out the arm holding the coffee cup to indicate he should follow. She waited until he got to his feet, until he was close enough to smell the creamer in her coffee, and then she said, “it helps me remember you’re the wrong one. When you’re sleeping, you look just like him.” Then she stepped out of the room and left him to follow.

# B SIDE

Pepper was _beautiful_. Even now, even when it was-and-wasn’t _her_ , even as she crossed her arms over her chest, stood like a seventh grader facing an unexpected presentation—even with Happy looking up at her with a slack and helpless face, even as she looked at Tony like he was an unfortunate puddle of shit stuck to her shoe:

She was beautiful. (Just like his dream, minus the part where she was filling up with heat from the inside out.)

“So,” Pepper lifted her arm, put her hand up to stop Steve’s talking. (The six-minute explanation of a two-minute problem.) “We’re really putting our time into this? We’re choosing to make this our best effort? A _feeling_ that you have? That’s more than,” she motioned sideways, “actual science? Have you talked to Jane about this? Have you?” she turned her head to look at Steve more fully. “We’re getting behind this? We’re really going to entertain this?”

“Yes.” Because Steve was adorable and devoted; because he was blind when he needed to be. Because the world would bend over backward just to make sure that Captain America didn’t fail. He hadn’t failed before, he wouldn’t fail now, and he could stand there with his head full of doubt about how it was possible or probable, but he could put certainty into his voice and make it true just-like- _that_. 

“There is no science,” Tony said. He was sitting on the couch (again), looking over a half-finished game of checkers, trying not to meet Pepper’s angry stare when she looked back at him. “This is it. This is all there is, Pepper. She’s getting through to me, I can’t get her to notice me at all.”

Pepper wanted to slap him. Tony had seen that look enough in his life to know it when it showed up. She marinated in it, staring at him while her cheeks went all pink and her eyes got watery. Her voice was breaking in her throat as she dragged air in through her nose and clenched her teeth. Her feet fidgeted against the ground, she turned her head far enough to look down at Happy, but he didn’t drag his face up from looking at his fists to meet her eyes.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Tony said, “but it’s all we’ve got, Pepper. Jane’s been looking, Jarvis has been looking, Selvig has been looking—hell, even Bruce is looking, and this isn’t his field. Thor is looking,” he glanced over at Steve who nodded in agreement. “This,” Tony stood up, tapped his chest, “this feeling is all I _know_ is true. It is _her_. Maybe the data’s different on her side, maybe there’s something there that isn’t here, but she’s not _looking_. We need her _looking_.”

Pepper’s next breath was wet, her voice was hardly composed when she said, “why isn’t she looking?”

Steve sighed.

Happy looked over at Tony, because he _knew_ , because he’d felt it, there were probably a hundred reasons why she wasn’t looking and maybe there was only one or two, or three, maybe five. (One-was-Steve, and one-was-Wanda, and one-was-Natasha, maybe if she was feeling loyal at the moment, and one was—) “She’s not looking because she’s angry, Pepper.”

“Angry?” Pepper repeated, “anger is one of the three emotions she has. You want to know how to get her attention, how about you think about some of the things she has to be angry about? Maybe you think about the opinion pieces they’re writing _right now_ about how she’s selfish and how she’s _unworthy_ to be fucking Captain America, and about how this miscarriage and her almost death that we made up to cover for you is proof! Maybe you think about how I’ve got an inbox full of threats masquerading as well-wishes, about how everyone is just _waiting_ for her to announce she’s incapable of running Stark Industries, about how there’s vultures circling, all of them waiting to get their piece of the fallout! Maybe you think about how the Avenger’s tower is missing _all_ of it’s leaders at the moment! Think about how shitty this is!”

“Pepper,” Happy said. He stood up when her screaming reached its loudest point. His hand slid up her back and she turned to look at him with wet, naked despair. “It’s not his fault. He didn’t do this.”

“You okay?” Steve whispered.

Tony was just fine. Tony was A-OK. He was one hundred percent perfectly fine. “I don’t think I can get angry enough for her to notice,” he said. They just weren’t made the same, him-and-her, not inside where she kept all that fury bottled up. It was a volcano in her gut, an explosion frozen in motion, just waiting for the right moment to let loose. 

“That’s because there’s nothing in your life you care about enough to notice losing,” Pepper snapped at him. 

It wasn’t funny, nothing about it was funny, nothing at all but how Happy looked so scandalized he might as well been an old woman wearing some pearls. How Happy’s breath was quick and loud drawing in over his tongue, how his arms dropped away from Pepper like she’d burned him. 

Steve’s whole body shifted, his weight rocked between his feet flat on the floor and he was standing between Pepper-and-Tony, not quite being an effective shield but picking a side in a fight that no man deserved to be in the middle of.

“Well,” Tony said. He looked at his hands, at the floor, his feet, the checker game—anywhere at all that wasn’t Pepper’s furious face. Then he stood up.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Pepper said.

“Pepper,” Happy hissed.

Tony looked at her, really looked at her. Looked at the tears, the snot and the pink patches on her face. He looked at her hands like fists, her bony shoulders poised to attack at a second’s notice. “You’re wrong,” he said.

“You don’t hav—” Steve started.

“Everyone she’s afraid of losing, I’ve already lost,” Tony said. There was something liquid and soft sloshing around in his gut, something like a craving, a spasm of anxiety and despair that was begging to be drown. “You know what I’ve found out, Ms. Potts? I found out I can survive almost anything. I don’t have the Avengers. I don’t have this house. I don’t have Jarvis. I don’t have a husband. I don’t have any of it.” He shrugged. 

“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough,” she said.

“And _maybe_ ,” Tony said as he stepped forward, as he ducked around Steve’s protective body, “I _did_. Maybe I did everything that I could do, maybe I didn’t mess up everything I touched—maybe it just didn’t matter.”

“If you’d tried—” was Pepper cutting into his words in time with Steve’s body suddenly imposing itself on too small a space. And it was Happy’s arm wrapping around her waist to pull her backward a step.

“Pepper!” Happy shouted over her voice, “stop.”

“Let me go,” was Pepper shaking free, was her stepping forward and finding Steve standing right where Tony had been a moment ago. There he was, Captain America with his chest puffed out like a turkey, frowning at her with perfect righteousness. 

There he was, with his voice soft and sturdy and sure, saying, “Natasha never would have recommended Tony if she’d been a man, Pepper. You know that.”

Pepper was furious and pink-faced, staring up at Steve, right at his face, and her voice was as raw as razor blades, she said, “and what? It all falls apart? One little thing? One choice and I’m supposed to believe it all falls apart?”

“More like a series of choices,” Tony said.

“They had the cure to save his life and they hid it from him. They needed his help but not enough to make him a member of the team. He didn’t meet his Steve until Germany—” 

Pepper’s face was a mask of misery, the way she looked at him broke his heart. She was shaking her head, stepping back with her hands up in surrender. 

“I don’t think we should try to make her any angrier,” Happy whispered. “Tony isn’t going to notice being angry. She’s good at it, she knows exactly how to use it—she’ll never stop to think why.”

Steve turned just enough to look at Tony, his hands fidgeted at his sides but he didn’t touch, he cleared his throat instead. He said, “she likes mangoes.”

Pepper snorted a half-laugh through the tissue she was using to mop up her face. “I don’t think she likes them that much.” She cleared her throat and looked at _Tony_ , right past Steve like he wasn’t even there. “You really believe in this, you’d stake Pepper’s life on it?”

“I really believe we have to see where this leads,” Tony said. “I believe she’s got more motivation than I do to get home.”

“I’m a mess,” Pepper said to cover the way her eyes went red again, to give herself an excuse to walk away. She turned around, grabbed her bag off the couch, “excuse me.” She retreated to a bathroom with four walls and a locking door.

“Mangoes?” Happy repeated.

Steve shrugged. “In smoothies.”

# A SIDE

Hill had walked into the room, taken stock of the food spread across the table, made a face to indicate something between disgust and pride before settling into the neutral nothing of her usual face. (Just by looking at there, there was nothing to use against Hill. She was unremarkably beautiful with no background, no interests and no real emotions with her face like a perfect mask. It was a trait that Tony had long admired and never quite mastered.) “Hungry?” she asked with no telling how she felt.

“Not particularly,” Steve said. But he was eating, exactly how Tony had told him to eat. Soon (probably sooner even than Steve was expecting) it would start to improve everything about his body from his energy to his strength and then his mood and he wouldn’t be frowning at the fish like he wanted to protest having to eat it but he couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to bother.

Hill raised an eyebrow at Tony, cocked her head sideways at the buffet on the table.

“I had to open a separate research division to meet the needs of our super powered members. If you think that’s a lot, you should see what Bruce needs to eat.” Tony was not sitting at the same table, but at one two removed from Steve. There was familiarity in closeness, an implied request for further conversation and contact that she was feeling too raw to tolerate at the moment. The media campaign had been enough of a distraction to hold her over but now she’d read it through (twice) and there was nothing to do but watch Steve chew-chew-chew-swallow his food. “It’s not bad,” Tony said. “It’d be easier if you had your Tony back.”

“Undoubtedly,” Hill said. “I’ve been attempting to liaise with Pepper about some explanation for Tony’s absence that doesn’t involve furry handcuffs and Rogers’ basement.”

Tony snorted. “From what I read, they weren’t furry handcuffs.” The basement bit wasn’t that far from the truth anyway. She scratched her fingers through her hair and looked at Steve frowning into his dish of food. “Pepper doesn’t have any ideas?”

“Pepper wants to see you,” Hill said.

Well, Tony didn’t want to see Pepper. She didn’t want to see her because Happy was going to be three steps behind her and Tony-was-Tony wasn’t _forgiving_ and she was holding herself together by a thread. “I don’t want to see Pepper.”

Hill couldn’t manage surprise with her face. The very best she could convey with a twitch of her lips was curiosity, but it was as brief as a second and smoothed out again immediately. “I heard you don’t like the idea of using the original Captain America suit.” (I heard it from the security cameras we have following you around. From whatever bent-back lackey got stuck manning the desk of monitors, drinking coffee to stay awake and recording details on notepads to report at the end of his shift.) 

“It wouldn’t have been my first choice but I’m not an expert on the media of this world. Nostalgia is a cheap shot, it works but it doesn’t last. I think there needs to be more focus on the Avengers as a functioning unit. We can’t do anything about Ultron’s origins, there’s nobody and nothing to put on trial—even if it was Hydra that did it, where’s the fall man? If there’s no face, there’s no trial, there’s no putting this to rest. The only choice you have is to rely on what you have that works.”

Hill crossed her arms over her chest with the file pressed into her side. Her feet shifted, they were facing one another as equals. (Wasn’t that a funny sensation, wasn’t that a fucking hilarious feeling to be taken seriously by the last person Tony would have thought to seek out?) “I think we’d have to have a functioning unit to present, heroes that people are used to seeing. We don’t have that. We have Captain America—and we have War Machine. People have heard of Black Widow, they remember hearing something about Falcon, but people know Thor, they know Iron Man. They know Hulk—even if they can’t make up their mind if they like him or not.”

“You don’t have Thor, or Hulk,” Tony said.

“And that scares people,” Hill said. “We could take the risk to lie that we do know where they are, that we are tracking them, that everything is fine—but that’s a big lie to stake your future on.”

Tony sighed out through her nose. “It’s a shit storm.”

“A soggy shirt storm,” Hill agreed. “So we’re putting the emphasis on what we’ve got.” She turned her head sideways long enough to take in the sight of Steve pulling a brand new dish of food toward his face. There was a growing stack of empties at his left elbow and the look of depleted enthusiasm caught on his face. “Is this actually going to help?”

“Yes,” Tony said. 

“People trust Captain America. Captain America trusts the Avengers, he shows up, he does a little song, they get a laugh, he promises them that things will be fine, asks them to help Sokovia, everyone feels better and we all move on.” Hill shrugged. It was a tiny paper bandage on hole in a big ass dam, but it was better than nothing. (And nothing was what they had seemed set on doing before.)

Tony nodded along. “Someone has to explain where Tony is. I get the feeling he’s not an inconspicuous kind of guy.”

“Are you an inconspicuous kind of woman?” Hill asked. She glanced up and down Tony’s body, lingered on the scabs on her hands and then back up at her face. 

“No,” Tony said. (She just wasn’t thinking about that right now, what they were telling the press where she was from, what stories and lies were being employed to explain her silence.) “But, like I said, we practice a great deal of proactive press. I even have an entire line of action figures and apparel with our faces on it. It makes a lot of money; that money fuels the charities that help clean up and recovery efforts in any area the Avengers disrupt in our global peacekeeping missions.”

Hill almost smiled but stopped just short. “That’s not the sort of world we live in,” she said. And then, “you should talk to Pepper. She’s been waiting.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” was not a promise. Hill didn’t expect one, barely remembered to acknowledge Steve before she left the room.

“T-shirts?” Steve repeated.

“T-shirts, baseball hats, sweat pants, dresses—you name it, we license it and sell it. It’s amazing how much money you can make from merchandise,” she said. “I bought your brand from the government, I tripled my investment in less than a year.”

Steve was nodding as he chewed through his second-to-last plate of food. “That’s pretty smart.” He didn’t even sound like he wanted to say it, but there he was saying: “Pepper and Happy did what they thought was best for our Tony. You shouldn’t hold it against them.”

Tony snorted. “Pepper sent you to get your face broken, maybe you should hold it against them.”

“There’s a lot of people that want to break my face,” Steve said. He shrugged it off, “you, him—them. It’s easier to count the ones that don’t want to take a swing.”

Tony pulled her chair back out to sit down, patted her pockets looking for a phone she didn’t have, and looked around for anything that she could read to distract herself from being in the same room as this idiot. There was nothing. Just him. Just her. Just Tony saying, “I think it’s your chin.”

Steve laughed. “Maybe,” and then he sat back in his seat. “I can’t eat anymore.”

“Well, go sleep for a while. You’ll wake up a whole new man.” She stood up again, “I need a shower anyway.”

“Alright,” Steve agreed, “I’ll show you your room.”

# B SIDE

Alcohol was useless, but it was a happy pretense to carry with him in the afternoon. There was Rhodey sipping out of a glass, savoring the taste of the liquor he’d brought with him as he worked through the idea with the same graciousness that Pepper had greeted it with. “Happy said we shouldn’t try to make her angry?”

“No,” Steve said but not directly to Rhodey. It was easier to look out, over the edge of the railing, at the rock and the water beyond. It was easier to concentrate on the breeze brushing across his bare forearms, to listen to the way the liquor rolled in the cup as he turned it around and around on the table top. Easier to think about _nothing_ than it was to think about Pepper’s voice rising-and-rising in time with the tears falling down her face.

It was easier than thinking about Tony’s face, blank and toneless, staring right back at her accusations, saying how _maybe it didn’t matter_ as if it were an idea he had never taken the time to discount. Steve’s wife was a woman with skeletons in her closet and guilt burnt into her back but she kept moving-forward, always figuring out a new-better-way because the past was the past could be full of monsters but it could be learned from. 

“Well shit,” Rhodey said. “I’m out of ideas.” His mouth made a funny attempt toward a smile that didn’t quite make it. There was no sparkle in his eye, there was no humor in his bared white teeth. 

Steve nodded. He sipped the liquor (nice and warm sliding down his throat). 

“I can list everything that makes her angry. Politics, paparazzi, lawyers—”

“Toasters,” Steve offered.

“The Avengers being injured, rumors—”

“The intern on third floor in New York.”

“Chad,” Rhodey said. He nodded along to that, sipping the tiniest sip of his drink in silent tribute to the intern that had enraged Tony to such an extent that he had to be reassigned to somewhere safer. (And none of them, even months later, knew what Chad had done precisely.) “Howard,” he added.

Steve let a short breath out through his nose. “She does hate Howard.”

“She doesn’t just hate him, she hates him so much it’s irrational. She can’t control how much she hates him.” 

Steve nodded, “I don’t think that’ll work. I keep sitting here,” he tore his eyes away from the scenery beyond, forced himself to look at Rhodey, to really concentrate on his concerned face, “trying to think of something. There has to be something that would make her notice. There has to be things that she loves—fast cars, a good fight—and I keep thinking, does she love them enough? Is it enough to make her look? To make her notice?” 

That was the core of the problem. That no matter how long he thought, no matter how he concentrated, no matter what he turned over in his head, he couldn’t think of any single thing that his wife loved. He couldn’t remember all the moments when her smile was sincere and her cheeks were pink and she was laughing along with the commotion because she was _happy_ (and safe, and present). Those moments existed, but they were lost in a fog. 

“You’ll figure it out.” Rhodey leaned back into the chair, nodded his head with no room for doubt at all. 

Steve looked at his empty glass and shook his head, “it feels like, it feels like I don’t know anything about her. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I thought I did.”

Or he didn’t. Or they were just as much strangers now as they had been three years ago. When they were brand new to making a team and she’d cornered him in an empty room. _It’s not the nineteen-forties, Steven_ she’d hissed at him, _Stop treating me like a woman. I don’t need you protecting me._

Rhodey was rolling his eyes when Steve looked up, “I’m sorry,” wasn’t even a bit apologetic, “that’s bullshit.” He shifted in his chair, leaned forward to impose a sense of secrecy that didn’t exist between them. “Half my life I’ve known Tony. Half my life I’ve felt everything you can feel about another person. I’ve loved her. I’ve hated her. I’ve been fed up with her. I’ve been in love with her. It never mattered how I felt about her because she always felt exactly the same way about me. I’m a friend, and she loves me, and that’s it.”

“Rhodey—”

“But _you_ ,” Rhodey said. “You changed things. We,” he motioned at him, at the house, at Pepper and Happy inside, “watched it from the outside, watched her bitch and complain about you, watched her seek you out, watched her fight you, watched her build that fucking diamond for you. Tony _loves_ you. She chose you. She put her faith in you—so don’t sit there, feeling sorry for yourself, telling me that you can’t figure out what makes her happy. She married you.”

That was part of the problem. She’d married him. She had. But this Tony that was taking up her space hadn’t. He hadn’t benefitted at all from knowing Steve. Whoever Captain America and Iron Man were in the other world, they hadn’t made the world a better place together. They hadn’t built the Avengers, they hadn’t become friends and lovers. They had stagnated at the beginning, when neither of them trusted the other. 

And that’s where Steve’s wife was, face to face with a man wearing Steve’s face that wasn’t her husband. Between Happy’s heartburn and Rhodey’s stern-and-heartbroken face, there was no denying what she’d been so busy doing in the other world. What had infuriated her, what had robbed her of a sense of safety and monopolized her time. 

Steve had seen what was left over of the men who had betrayed his wife. “I said mangos.”

Rhodey snorted, he poured more liquor in their glasses. “She does like mangoes.” He took a sip, and licked his lips. “Tony wouldn’t give up. We can’t give up on her.”

Steve turned his glass and nodded his head. It was agreeing by rote, feeling none of the energy that Rhodey was trying share. “We aren’t giving up.” (But that didn’t mean he had any idea what he was doing either.)

# A SIDE

Tony was standing in the middle of the room he’d shown her to. Just standing there looking around, like she was trying to find anything that felt familiar to her. It was a blank room, devoid of any particular personality or design. Their Tony had intended it to be his room (the most desirable one in the compound, for no reason other than the intended occupant) but he hadn’t gotten around to making it more than a nicely made bed and empty shelves. 

“What changed?” Steve asked from the doorway. He was leaning his shoulder against it, feeling uncomfortably full of food. He was tired again (still, maybe). It was like a cloud in his head, making his whole body feel lonesome for bed. (Maybe, maybe it was lonely for warmth, for touch, for comfort.) “Why are you helping us?”

Tony’s fingers ran across an empty windowsill. “Does it matter?”

“I like to think motivation matters.”

“Why did you let me out?” she asked. Her fingers slid off the windowsill, danced across a nondescript lampshade and landed on a bare desk. She turned her body, leaned her hip against the edge of the desk and pulled her arms up to cross over her chest. 

“I didn’t believe you belonged in a jail cell.”

Tony’s body made a motion like a laugh, a snort, a quick draw of amused breath but she didn’t turn to look at him. “Right,” she agreed, “it must be the walls that offend you.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

She did turn then, arms raising up to cross over her chest, staying close to the window and far from him. Tony’s hair had lost its curl (and what a funny thing to notice), flattened down to hang in her face as she scoffed at his ignorance. “You don’t think I belong in a jail cell but you want me to give up his access to his systems. You don’t think I belong in a jail cell, but you don’t think I deserve to have the suit, to have freedom, to be in Sokovia where I was _helping_. You don’t think I deserve to be free, you just don’t like the concrete walls Natasha put around me.”

(Maybe.) “I don’t have any reason to trust you,” it was the first thing that came to his mind, the first thing that came tumbling out of his mouth. It wasn’t what he meant to say (and what had he meant to say, something about Tony missing the point, or being wrong, or some defense for the crime she accused him of). “I don’t have a lot of reasons to trust him either. That’s not a good enough reason to put you or him in a jail cell.”

“I’m invested in my own survival, Steven. I’m accustom to luxuries, and I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve been tortured. I’ve been imprisoned, and I’d just as well not do it again. I’d rather not have to survive watching people who look like people I love _enjoy_ humiliating me. So, helping you helps me.”

“And that’s what matters, helping yourself?” 

It must have been Bucky, when they were kids, with Steve’s blood all over his hands after another failed attempt to mop up a bloody nose, cursing and spitting mad at him asking why he couldn’t just leave things alone. Why fight with no end in sight, with no noticeable purpose, for no good god-damned reason. (And sometimes there was a reason. Sometimes it was the principle of the thing. Sometimes it was because he couldn’t help it, like an itch that needed scratching, he just couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.) 

Tony’s smile was defensive and offensive all at once. It was petal pink and white. Her arms dropped away from her chest, her hands rested on her hips and she was, all at once, exactly the woman she’d been standing across from him in the yard the first day. She was cataloguing his weak points so obviously it might as well been visible in the air. “I’m tired, Steven.”

Tired of this world and this fight. Steve nodded. “I’ll let you sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

# B SIDE

The quest for silence had brought him to a guest bedroom, back to a closet door, legs crossed, eyes closed—

And it was quiet. It was the quietest his house had ever been while it was still standing. The rooms around him were filled to the brim with unspoken things. (Walls that couldn’t talk, so much, as record.) Even the echo of Pepper’s anger, and her tears, had hollowed out into a dull kind of blankness. Her accusations were still now, no longer sharp, no longer hurtful. They weren’t true but there was no point in proving or disproving the truth. 

Truth was, after all, a matter of perspective. Truth was the weapon of the winning side; a sullied bit of propaganda produced by men with money. It was filmmakers with cameras and visions, repeating history exactly how they wanted it to be remembered. 

Truth was, Howard was a hero and Tony had expanded the family fortune through war profiteering. No, no, the truth was a man named Steven had woken up in a world in need of a hero. He’d woken up exactly when he was needed, full of spirit and pride and patriotism. Steven was a man out of time, with old fashion ideals, unafraid to stand for what was right.

Truth was, Captain America was the greatest soldier of all time. A real American hero with a face perfect for slapping on trading cards and lunch boxes. (Truth was, Iron Man was a hero and Tony Stark was a liability and nobody could quite remember that they were one in the same.)

“What’re you doing?” Natasha asked. Her voice shouldn’t have been that close, her body shouldn’t have been crouching an arm’s reach away. But there she was, dressed in her day-off clothes, looking casually lethal as she slid down to mirror him. Her palms were sliding down her thighs, her legs were crossed, her eyes were focused directly on him.

“Meditating,” he pointed at the closed bedroom door. “How did—” (More importantly,) “You are _here_.”

“You still have the cornerstone on holographic technology,” she said. Then she leaned forward far enough to tap his hand with her finger, all flesh warm and real. “Is it working? The meditating?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want it to do?”

He wanted it to break through the cloudy space between him and the woman that couldn’t be influenced. He wanted to find a crack in the armor that seemed impenetrable. The outer shell that by all oral accounts seemed to be absolutely without flaw. But he was doing nothing but scratching his blunt fingertips down wet glass, getting nothing but disappointed for his trouble. “Have you come to tell me I’m crazy too? I know it sounds a little out there but—”

“No,” Natasha said. “You’re not crazy.”

“You felt it too?”

“No,” Natasha shrugged at his disbelief. “I don’t know you. I’m not your wife or husband, I’m not your best friend—I like her. We’re co-workers and sometimes friends. I like to think that she’s trusted me when she had no good reason to, and I think that if I were ever going to pay her back for that, or for any of it, it would be right now. It would be by treating you the way I would treat her. If it was her idea, this déjà vu thing, I would believe her.” Natasha glanced over her shoulder toward the windows beyond the bed. “Steve’s an idiot.”

“He’s a good guy,” Tony said.

“Good guys can be idiots,” Natasha looked back at him and cleared her throat. “Tony isn’t going to be easy to get through to. She survives by being untouchable. I’m sure you’re not as different as they must think you are—I’ve seen your smile. You must practice that in the mirror every night and every morning. You have an advantage that she doesn’t.”

“I can’t imagine I do.”

“You’re a man,” Natasha said. “You’re a rich white _man_. Things have always been easier for you than they have been for her—and that’s not meant to insult you, or to say that you haven’t experienced struggles because I’m sure that you have.”

It would have been ignorant to assume that he hadn’t benefited from his gender. Stupider to try to protest now that he’d seen the headlines and the newspaper covers oozing with condescension saying things like, _surpassing expectations_ when they talked about the Tony who belonged here. The media men in his world had never used those words, they had never started an article with the assumption that it would be difficult to believe his accomplishments, that he didn’t deserve them. (And, maybe the truth was, he hadn’t deserved half of them as much as the people with awards to give liked giving them away to recognizable faces.) “Is that why you and I aren’t friends?”

Natasha shrugged. “She can be really annoying. I’ve always thought that, but—did it make a difference when I was sent to observe her? Maybe. She was annoying, and she was reckless, but it felt justified. She was dying, and—” Natasha’s smile was unforgivingly vicious. “They had the cure, but they wanted to see what she’d do without it. They were letting her die just to see if she was worth joining their group. And what they had? It wasn’t theirs. It belonged to her.”

Tony relaxed into the closet doors, slouched against them with his hands resting in his lap. “So, you’re telling me there’s no way I can get through to her?”

“No,” Natasha said, “I’m telling you that there’s a big, fat, obvious weakness in her armor. It’s about six foot. It has blue eyes. It carries a shield.”

“Steve?”

Natasha nodded. “It’s exhausting,” sounded like it came right from her gut, “to spend your whole life looking over your shoulder. To never be able to sleep, to never rest, to never be able to let your guard down. Tony has friends, and they’d do anything for her, there’s no doubting that. But Steve is different. Steve protects her when she’s tired. He keeps her safe when she sleeps. She loves him.”

Yes, she did. She loved him so much it was desperate. It was breath-stealing. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Use it to get home,” Natasha said. “Because she’ll tear your world down just to keep from feeling it. She won’t let them use it against her, she’ll convince herself that she thought it up, that she never felt it.” Then she got back to her feet, all sinew and easy grace, and hesitated just at the point of walking away. It seemed like there were words stuck in her throat that couldn’t be swallowed despite her best attempts. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For how I treated you in New York.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Thanks.”

Now all he had to do was figure out how to use Steve to get his wife's attention. (And Tony had ideas, that were all bad ideas, not good ideas, but ideas nonetheless.)


	19. Chapter 19

# A SIDE

The smoke was heavy, gray and _scented_. It was the smell that dragged him forward, that dragged him back through the nothing around him. Down and through, and all at once across a threshold and into a room. The blank-black-nothing under his feet was interrupted by a scattering of broken tile that pieced itself together beneath his feet. The heavy smell of smoke was interrupted by the rustle of paper-on-paper, a whispery catch of textures rubbing that made him look left.

There was a bathtub, as magnificent as a four-poster bed, as big as a fucking house (or what passed for that in a void), and reclining with kingly indulgence in a bath full of hundred dollar bills was Tony God damn Stark. He was assessing the cigar pinched between his fingers, studying it with all the same fascination he spared for things that intrigued him. His eyebrows flinched upwards, his lips plucked up at the corners into his slow-sarcastic smile as he dragged his eyes upward from the blunt burning tip of the cigar to Steve’s face. “This is what you think of me?”

Steve barely had the time to open his mouth, to protest the milky gray darkness all around them. This wasn’t his fantasy, it was just another trick his dreams were playing on him.

But Tony pulled his knee up so it broke through the green curls of money all around him. He leaned more fully against the slope of the tub and let his arm hang over the side. His smirk was unbearable, his eyes dark in the smoky light. “It’s a bit on the nose don’t you think?” 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You lived through the Great Depression, didn’t you?” Tony’s free fingers spread over his bare knee. That was a funny detail in the dream (hadn’t he been wondering, lately, if he’d ever seen any part of Tony but his face and his hands. Hadn’t he been scouring through his memory for some idea of what the man looked like without his clothes on. But Tony was dressed in every one of his memories, always ironed to precise corners, wearing clothes tailored to fit every curve of his body.) “Concentrate, Captain.”

“On what?” Steve asked. He looked back at Tony’s face, at his face behind a screen of smoke. At how dark his eyes were in the low light, at how amused they were to have caught him in this stupid dream. Only Tony could sneak into his midnight thoughts and act as if he had every right to pass judgement on what he found there. 

“Is this what you really think of me?” Tony asked again. He narrowed his eyes at the cigar again. “Howard smoked these.” He drew the smell in and his smile fell into a flat line. “Exactly these, that’s a strange thing to remember isn’t it?”

“I don’t care what kind of cigar Howard smoked.”

“But you remembered,” Tony countered. “You remember them all, don’t you? None of them remember you.” He dropped his hand away from his face again, but the smile didn’t come back. No, he looked at Steve without blinking—at his face, at the uniform that he couldn’t remember if he had been wearing ten minutes ago. The material was tight and thick. It cinched around his waist with no space left to draw in a free breath and it pulled at his shoulders, so he stood up straight.

American dreams had to stand up straight. It wouldn’t do to see Captain America slouching.

“You didn’t answer me, Cap,” Tony said.

“Maybe I’m just not interested in playing whatever game this is,” Steve lifted one hand from where it was grasped around the belt at his waist, waved his finger to indicate all of Tony’s body neatly hidden beneath a pile of bills. All except his bare shoulders and the curve of his knee. 

Tony’s smile was the devil, smoky and smooth, peering across an unfamiliar dream like he’d already seen how this one ended. His tone was forgiving, his head tilted to accentuate the amused tip of his lips, “you haven’t, by the way.”

“Haven’t been drawn into this game? Because it feels like I have.” And fuck if Steve had any idea what the point of the fucking game was. 

“Seen me naked.” Tony tapped the cigar to the side, let the ash fall into the void beneath the dream. “At least not unless you’ve been looking up those videos of my youthful indiscretions. That doesn’t seem like a very you thing to have done.”

“I didn’t look up any videos.”

Tony nodded along. “So, this is it? I always wondered,” Tony hadn’t ever wondered, as far as Steve could tell, what anyone thought of him, “I expected something diabolical, perhaps not something as cartoonish as this. All I’m missing is a ACME bomb and a handlebar moustache.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then it wasn’t _him_ , but _her_ body sliding through the money. It was the woman that Tony wasn’t, suddenly gripping the edge of the tub with both fists, leaning forward so the money overflowed the tub. It fell to the floor with the sound of gold coins (wrapped up in paper dollars) and her face was too close to his to make sense and her voice was low and confidential when she said, “is this what you really think of me?”

But Steve opened his eyes in his own bedroom, sitting up with his heart beating a hundred-and-two time a minute. It stole his breath, and his grasp on the reality of the world around him. It was a confusion of shapes and sounds that settled slowly into familiar things. A shelf, a bureau, the outline of his door. The details of the dream faded, just the faint image of Tony’s smile lingered, smiling at him with it’s dreadful amusement, like daring him to find a computer and a reliable internet source.

# B SIDE

Natasha was shimmering with sweat, leaning back against the ropes of the boxing rink with a water bottle dangling loosely from her fist. “What do you think she’d do?” The question was interrupted by a long drag off the water bottle.

Steve’s body was thrumming with adrenaline, warm with exertion and ready to go. (But then, that was just his body, always ready to go. Always ready to find a fight worth losing.) There was a sore spot on his ribs because Natasha was reliable about finding a weak point and sticking with it, but he liked the soreness of it. 

“I mean, if she thought you’d betrayed her?”

Oh-well-she’d— 

“She wouldn’t kill you,” Natasha said. Not because of any moral standpoint, but because she’d put too much money into the marketing. They had a plan for unfortunate eventualities, for if one of them died. (She’d asked him that over ice cream sundaes before they started dating, who he thought could take over the shield if he happened to meet a man he couldn’t defeat.) “But she’s got a great imagination.”

Steve leaned back against the ropes, scrubbed his blunt fingertips through his hair. “She’s smart too. I mean—I thought those doctors that worked with Dr. Erskine were invasive, but Tony really took thorough to the next level.”

“Is it true she knows how to break every bone in your body?”

Steve snorted. “According to her math, yes. We haven’t exactly had a reason to test it in the real world.” He shrugged, “but I don’t doubt her math. She’s never wrong.”

Natasha slid down into a crouch, set the bottle by her feet and huffed a sigh. “I keep thinking,” she said (oh-so-quietly), “what she’d think if she saw him. I mean, that’s _her_ ,” she motioned over her shoulder, toward whatever direction the male Tony was currently in, “but it’s not. He’s— Tony would take no prisoners if she saw him.”

It was better not to think of that. It was easier not to think of the differences, to imagine the slights and the missteps of the other world. (Easier not to think of what sort of man he must be there, what sort of man he’d be if he’d kept on-and-on insisting he was fine, that he had a purpose, that he needed nothing and nobody. If he hadn’t met Tony, if he hadn’t fall in love with her.) “She wouldn’t want him to go back.”

Natasha sighed. “No. She wouldn’t want him to go back.” 

Steve had been doing an A-Plus job ignoring how Natasha had shown up right _now_. Right when he was feeling sorry for himself; right when it was starting to feel like there was no way to get through to his wife. “What did you say to him?”

“Who?” Sounded like, looked like, could almost be believed to be innocence. 

“You know who. I know you said something. What was it?”

Natasha shrugged. “I just told him what I thought would work. I don’t know if he agrees or not.” Her smile was aggravatingly cool; the things she wasn’t say were safe in her chest. Then she was back on her feet. “Come on. Sam won’t spar with me anymore.”

Steve stepped away from the ropes. “You did break two of his fingers.”

“ _Accidentally_.” 

“Well, not everyone is as forgiving as I am.” He stretched because she was. He watched her move, all sinew and muscle, so easily mistaken for softness beneath her clothes. “What are you doing about Wanda?”

“I am not doing anything about Wanda.” It was a blank answer, a bit of a smirk on her face. She finished stretching but he didn’t attack, instead her hands rested on her hips to the background of dim music. “You know I can’t discuss Avengers business.”

“You could always tell me what you said to Tony,” but she wouldn’t. “Unless you’re here to assess my fitness to return?”

Natasha laughed like pity, like she wanted to hug him, and she couldn’t. (Not now, not in Tony’s weight room full of cameras, not with a well-earned sweat on her skin. No, she wouldn’t hug him here, but she could look at him like she wished she could.) “No,” she said softly. “I don’t think any of us anticipate beginning that assessment until we have a more definitive answer regarding your wife.”

A more definitive answer meant something like: _whether there’s any reason to hope_ but Natasha was a pragmatist with a cynic’s view and she meant, _until it becomes obvious enough there’s no hope that even Captain America can see it_. “What’s your timetable on that?”

Natasha’s fingers dug into her hips, “we have had reported sightings of Wanda and her brother Pietro in Sokovia. We’re going slow on this—we have some idea what she’s capable of but we’re not sure how to approach her without taking another hit we can’t afford.”

“You could always send me.”

Natasha just shook her head, “no I can’t.”

“Come on, Nat. I can’t stay here—doing nothing? I’m running in circles, I’m hitting baseballs—I’m losing my mind. I haven’t been this useless since I woke up from the ice. I can help. I know what to expect now I ca—”

“Steve,” Natasha said. “I _can’t_.” Because he was unstable, because he’d made promises, because she couldn’t risk it, because-because- _because_. “Come on. Let’s get a good work out in before I have to catch a flight.”

Sure. Right. “Yeah,” he agreed just before she attacked.

# B SIDE

Sleep wasn’t evading Tony; he had done his very best to avoid it. In the lab long after midnight he’d been scouring over newspaper articles, working reformulating one of the most basic ideas known to man. Somewhere, across a universal divide, there was a woman that was missing a man that was missing her and then there was him:

Anthony Edward Stark, so recently retired from womanizing (as the newspapers liked to say) that he could remember more times he didn’t wake up next to Pepper than the times he did.

Now that was a thought that could keep a man awake for days. A thought that could sneak right in, just under the fully conscious level, to marinate in his skull until he found himself running his fingers down the smooth paint job of one of his favorite cars. Not that he had this car, because he didn’t. It had gone down with the house, lost to the bubbling water and the crumbling concrete. Maybe someone at Stark had fished it out of the sea or maybe they hadn’t but, Tony did not have this garage or this house or this car.

He’d forgotten what it felt like to have these things, to have the illusion of safety and privacy that these things gave him. Inside the car, it was only him and the miracle of moving parts. It was only the road and the unknown—an infinity of possibility. Inside the car, there was no loose ends and no obligations. Inside this car, listening to the engine purr, there was no history and no future. There was only _now_ , as easy and immediate as a good song on the radio and a full tank of gas.

There was no Pepper from another world, showing up like a sex dream in his nightmares, with her skin stretched across a fire that almost killed her. There was no Pepper from another dimension looking him straight in the face telling him he just hadn’t cared enough.

There was no other version of him, taking up space in his universe, being so perfectly unbreakable that his best idea to get her to notice him was to remind her how much she loved her husband. (No, no, _no_ , it wasn’t that he was going to tickle her right where all that familiar fondness for her husband was. Because Tony was an amazing actor with a believable face but he was still Tony and Steve was Steve was Howard’s obsession and not his. Steve was the man that tolerated him with a fair smile on his face and one eye constantly on the clock. Tony couldn’t even convince himself that he loved Steve.)

No. Tony was a professional flirt with an opportunistic libido. He was a few morals short of a full set, and he was willing to aggravate a woman by reminding her just how much she liked being able to touch her husband. 

(Maybe he was. Maybe.)

Right now, right _now_ he was standing in a donut shop in the grayish almost morning, smelling the delicious scent of percolating coffee and hot glaze, wondering how he’d gotten there and how exactly he expected to pay for his purchases. Sure he had a wallet because Steve had bought him one and sure he had some money but there was limit.

Limits were important; were necessary.

Tony had thought he found a limit in Pepper: a limit to the insanity he was willing to pursue (but he hadn’t, as Ultron demonstrated). He could remember when he kissed her, at _last_ , how exhilarating and terrifying it was. He could remember the way she smiled at him when they were alone, wrapped up in his blankets, with her fingers combing through his hair. She was beautiful in all his memories, a bright and glowing light that had never diminished.

But Tony didn’t kiss her like he used to. He didn’t touch her with reverence and appreciation. They laid next to one another with blank familiarity, like two old bricks in a path, waiting for the inevitable erosion of time.

“Sir,” the kid behind the counter said. “Did you want something?”

No. He didn’t want any of it. He didn’t want to be here, skimming through articles accusing Ms. Stark of stealing America’s most eligible bachelor. That same line over-and-over again, as if she had set out to rob every red blooded American woman of the chance to climb into Steve’s lap and take a turn. He didn’t want to be here, thinking how far he could fake it before he’d have to start thinking about whether or not some part of him wanted to fuck Captain America.

( _Start_ thinking about it; like rubbing a sore spot he didn’t know he’d bruised. His body was full of spots like that. Just after a battle he was nothing but a minefield of places he hadn’t found out were injured yet.)

“Coffee,” Tony said.

Hot and black and preferably thrown at high speed toward his face. He could lure back the woman that belonged her with the sharp pain of permanent disfigurement. He wouldn’t have to use the man that loved her.

Because that’s what Steve was here. Steve Rogers was a man who loved his wife, who dressed up in a Star Spangled Costume when the moment called for it and did his best. In the afternoons when there were no innocent lives to save, and no wars to fight, he played baseball with his wife. He wore suits that were tailored to his body, to parties, to smile and rub elbows with men-and-women that couldn’t wait to impress upon Steve how much they adored him. Steve Rogers was second-in-command, the _field_ leader because he had been a soldier in a war where men died in staggering numbers. Steve had made choices that killed friends and he’d kept moving despite it.

Steve was all those things, a hero and a human and a _husband_. He was a man who loved his wife with stalwart simplicity.

Tony was a villain with a familiar enough face that was going to hell. But, after he paid for his coffee, after he drove his second favorite car as far as it would go. After he soaked in the sunshine of infinity possibility. (Just the notion, the little, sneaky idea, that maybe if he did nothing at all, maybe he wouldn’t have to go back.)

# A SIDE

Rhodey came to her with dragging feet, stuttering his every footstep just to by himself some time. Regardless of the hesitancy of his feet, his shoulders were squared to the task he meant to accomplish. It was before dawn, when the complex was quiet but not still. In the kitchen, with the table like a mediator between them. She’d brewed coffee strong enough to strip machine parts and he’d taken the precaution of wearing a well-pressed shirt.

“Can it wait?” Tony asked right as Rhodey went to open his mouth. That made him tilt his head, made him stare at her with narrowed eyes. “I just made this coffee,” she motioned at the cup, “I just want to drink it before you say whatever you’ve been sent here to say.”

Sleep hadn’t eluded her, it wasn’t hiding, because she knew exactly where to find it. It was just that sleep and she had decided to take up space in separate rooms for the night. She was occupying a grand, empty, soulless room and sleep was snuggling up with Steven Grant Rogers. The most she’d managed through the whole of the night was laying still enough to count as resting.

“It can’t wait long,” Rhodey said. He picked up a cup off the counter, pointed at the pot like asking if he could join. Her shrug wasn’t a yes or no, but he poured himself a cup either way. It was steaming and black. “This is coffee?” He came back around and pulled out a chair opposite her.

“That’s what the label said.”

The silence was awkward, filled up with half-thought and half-said things. It was layered over and over with false intimacy. This wasn’t the man that she’d grown up with; this wasn’t the friend that stood next to her at her Mother’s grave. This wasn’t the man that risked his career to find her. It wasn’t the man she trusted with her suit. This man wasn’t a single one of those people and all at once, every single one of them. Every part of her was leaning into the idea of trusting him, reaching out through her skin to cling onto anything that looked friendly in this upside down world. 

“Strong,” Rhodey coughed when he sipped it. “That’s stron—that’s some very strong coffee.”

“Natasha sent you,” Tony said.

“We were having coffee.”

She sighed. “Is the answer going to change if we drink this?” She lifted her cup, held it right up to her lips and waited for him to tell her that it didn’t matter how long they waited or what they drank, the truth was the truth was he’d been sent by Natasha.

“We all feel that it would help to clear the air if you would be willing to cooperate—”

Tony slapped her cup back down on the table. Anger rippled through her, just beneath the skin, where it quickened her heartbeat. Those trackers in her arm were buzzing (or weren’t, maybe just felt like it). “All of you?”

“Tony—”

No, no, no. She shoved herself up to standing, threw the tablet on the table as she moved. It clattered against the wood as the chair scraped back against the floor. “All of you?” she repeated. She hadn’t bothered with socks or shoes when she’d woke up. Too many months of forgetting how to dress herself before a nice hot shower (and very frequently a bit of an early morning workout with her husband). This world was cold floors and impersonal hallways and her bare feet hit the ground with unsatisfyingly dull slaps. “Who is all? Hill?”

“Yes,” Rhodey said six-or-seven steps behind, “she said you might have some insights on how to handl—”

“Sam?”

“Yes. Tony!” Rhodey said. He jogged after her, doing his best to remember they weren’t friends enough for him to put his hands on her. It wasn’t Steve’s old-fashioned-ideals about women and men and how one never ever hit the other regardless of the circumstances. It was brittle courtesy that kept Rhodey’s hands hovering in the air over her arms. He wanted to stop her, but he wasn’t going to. “Where are you going?”

“You said all of us,” she repeated. “Natasha, Hill, Sam, _you_. All of us. That’s a funny thing to say. All of you keep acting like I can’t see right through your bluff, like I don’t know how each of you think. All of you doesn’t send _you_ to tell me to cooperate. All of you doesn’t sneak into the kitchen when there’s nobody else around. I appreciate the courtesy of a light touch,” she rounded the last corner and grabbed the door knob as Rhodey pulled her back a step _at last_. “I’m not delicate,” she said as she yanked his arm out of his grasp. 

The door wasn’t locked (never had been, not as long as she’d ever known the man), it slid open easily and there was Steven Rogers looking blurry and half awake, squinting at the door from where he was sitting up on his bed. “What are you doing?”

“What exactly is it you want me to cooperate with?” she asked as she invited herself across the threshold with entitlement that didn’t belong to this world. Steven didn’t do more than shift how he was sitting on the bed, didn’t offer her a second look as he looked directly at Rhodey like hoping to read the answer right off his face.

But Rhodey was two steps behind, stone faced and silent. _Petulant_ as a child. (As she was being, maybe, turning an attempt at a nice conversation into a confrontation.)

“I’m sure it’s,” Steven said, he was searching through a database of useable terms and arrived at, “team building?”

Tony’s hands were gripped tight on her hips as she dipped down far enough to look at Rhodey’s down-turned face. “ _All of you_ , huh?”

“We just want to ask questions,” Rhodey asked. “We just want to be able to trust you, to understand some of the things that you’ve done—”

Steven’s hand was pushing through his hair, fingernails scratching at his scalp in that way he did when he’d been summoned too early to solve a problem too stupid for his time. His feet were bare on his cold floor, he was wearing his pajamas, looking at her with as much civility as he could manage. Every single part of his body was gearing up to lie to her, but when he opened his mouth he said, “I don’t know anything about this. I’ll find out what I can.”

And well, she just didn’t know what to do with that sort of reassurance. “Good,” sounded sharp and smart.

# A SIDE

“Steve!”

It was starting to feel like no matter where he went looking for Natasha he wasn’t going to find her. Not through any purposeful evasiveness on her part but, because he couldn’t go farther than a few feet without someone that needed his attention. It had been Hill’s lackeys with revisions of scripts for the charity event, or last-minute costume questions, or asking what size shoe he wore. It was Sam asking him if he wanted to have lunch, or to go for a run or—

Or it was Pepper, not running but walking as fast as any woman could in a pencil skirt, her hair tucked away from her perfect porcelain doll face. (And Steve, standing still, watching her approach, wondering if she were Tony’s real ideal woman. If this was what he considered the highest order of beauty and why. Not because Pepper wasn’t beautiful but—) “I’ve been waiting for you all morning,” she said. “Didn’t they tell you I was looking for you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, nobody told me anything.”

“Has Tony been put back in confinement?”

No. She was out and free, inviting herself into other men’s bedrooms to demand answers to questions he hadn’t even known needed asking. “No.”

“You’ve told her that I’d like to speak with her?”

“Yes.”

Pepper’s expression didn’t get pinched in frustration but evened out into calm acceptance. The anxious lean of her body relaxed into a perfect upright posture. “I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I’m sure she just needs ti—”

“As a woman who has worked for, dated and lived with Tony Stark I can tell you with absolute authority that time will do nothing to fix this situation.” Still she brushed at a phantom hair on her forehead and bought herself a moment to collect her thoughts by glancing down the hall. “I need her to understand that this isn’t what I intended to happen.”

Steve nodded along.

“I had anticipated it might be an argument but—”

Steve nodded again. Down the hall, coming around the corner was Natasha, the very woman he’d spent the past half hour trying to track down. She was carrying a folder in one hand, wearing day-off clothes and a harassed expression. Rhodey was following behind her step, stopping mid-sentence as soon as he saw Steve.

“I had no indication that—”

Natasha lifted her eyebrows at Pepper’s back, crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall like she intended to stay and listen.

(And in his head, a worrisome half-thought, a memory of a gray dream, the vision of Tony Stark ruminating on the meaning of a cigar.)

“Pepper,” Steve cut in, “there was indication. Everything she has done since she arrived here was _indication_. If you didn’t see that, I’m sorry. I did the best I could but, there was no indication that this wouldn’t end exactly how it ended.”

“She is Tony,” Pepper said. Maybe she meant that Tony wouldn’t have attacked a teammate, or maybe she meant that Tony wouldn’t have attacked _Steve_ or maybe she meant that he shouldn’t have let them put Tony in a cage. (It was the walls that offended him, maybe that’s what she meant, maybe he didn’t mind the cage just as long as the walls were see-through.) “This shouldn’t have happened—it wouldn’t have happened if—”

“Pepper,” Steve said. He crossed his arms because he wanted to put his hands on her shoulders, he wanted to squeeze her arms until she understood. “It doesn’t matter what I did. It wouldn’t have mattered if I walked into the city or lured her out. It wouldn’t have mattered if I attacked first or carried a white flag. She made up her mind about me, and she was _always_ going to do what she did.”

Pepper didn’t speak immediately. Her head was tipped slightly to the left, her eyes were concentrating on his face. Her hands were threaded together, hanging loosely in front of her body. Down the hall, behind her back, Natasha was glancing sideways to Rhodey who was doing a great job looking at his shoes. 

“Tony made up his mind about you too,” Pepper said. She might as well have been placing an order, as disinterested in the conversation as she sounded. “He made up his mind that he trusted you to do the right thing. Do you understand what that means, _Captain Rogers_?”

“Yes, I—”

“No,” was her hand as quick as lightning, lifting to point a finger at his face. He didn’t step backward but he flinched nonetheless. “You _don’t_. You don’t know anything about Tony because you _made up your mind_ about him before you bothered to try to know him. I don’t have the time or patience to correct your misconceptions about him. Tony _trusts_ you. _You_ ,” she repeated. “Captain America, to do what is _right_. To do the right thing, damn the _consequences_ because that’s what you’ve always done. You’d fight anyone, you’d do _anything_ that it took to do what you thought was right.” 

But the thing was, damn the consequences, “I did,” Steve said. The words were hot as steam and brittle as dry leaves. “I did what I thought was best.”

Pepper looked like she’d been slapped. Why not? Her perfect constructed speech had not moved him to contrition (as she no doubt expected) and here he was looking right back into her furiously beautiful face. 

“I’m not the one that started that fight in Sokovia. I’m not keeping her from you. She doesn’t want to talk to you and honestly, I’ve got more important concerns than worrying about whether or not she’s gotten her feelings hurt. We need our Tony back, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen because _nobody_ is working on why they got switched in the first place.”

Pepper stepped closer to him, as close as a lover with her face so close he could see every freckle on her cheeks. She whispered, “I don’t trust you like he does. He knows when he’s fucked up, he knows he isn’t perfect. I don’t believe that idea has occurred to you yet.” Then she stepped backward, spun in a circle and went back the way she’d come. 

Natasha had disappeared, back around the corner or through an open door. It was only him and the echo of Pepper’s anger.

# B SIDE

Tony hadn’t gone back to the mansion (yet). It was an intention that he kept intending to follow through with and yet, here he was, sitting at the bar of some family-friendly bar-and-grille, looking at the watery depths of a shot he’d ordered about ten minutes ago. 

Maybe it was fifteen.

It could have been twenty.

He had intended to drink it, to take the edge off the idea. (Which idea, he didn’t know. The idea that maybe things wouldn’t work out with Pepper. The idea that maybe, under the correct conditions, he could find Steve Rogers attractive. The idea that if it were for the greater good he was willing to seduce a man that loved his wife with staggeringly simple devotion. The idea that it wouldn’t even be the first married person he’d ever had sex with. The idea that it might not work. The idea that _She_ deserved better than this but here he was anyway, fucking up her world the way he’d fucked up his.)

His intentions weren’t as reliable now as they once had been. He was still working from intention to action when a pretty white hand slid across the bar and took the shot right out of his grasp. There was Natasha, looking casually beautiful, dressed for travelling, swallowing his drink. She set the empty glass on the bar when it was gone and invited herself to sit by his side. “I think you have to pay for it whether your drink it or not.”

“I have money,” he said.

Natasha’s smile was uncertain. “Steve’s worried.”

Yes, of course he was. Tony had already paid for the drink but he pulled a few bills out of his pocket to leave a tip to pay for the seat he’d occupied so long. The bartender nodded a thanks as he scooped it up. There was a fleeting, half-second of recognition when the man looked at Natasha but it was gone as soon as another patron called. It didn’t seem to matter since they were headed for the door. “Steve seems like a worrier,” he said when they were outside again. The afternoon was growing long shadows, the warmth of the day had settled into a simmer. 

“He’s got a lot to worry about,” Natasha returned. “I should know, I’m worrying about most of his usual worries right now.”

How could someone respond to that? “What exactly do you expect me to do with your _information_?”

Natasha leaned against the hood of his (borrowed) car. She shrugged under her jacket, trying for casual indifference and managing little more than overt manipulation. She had _ideas_ the way he had _ideas_ but thoughts were safe when they were in your skull. It was when they got out that they became dangerous. 

(Like Ultron. A brilliant idea and a massive failure.)

“Natasha,” he said.

“It’s obvious that he views you as only marginally different than his wife. He’s hurt. He’s lonely. He’s looking for something to help him feel better. It wouldn’t take a great deal of effort to be that thing.”

“And if I wasn’t interested in gay adultery?”

Natasha snorted at that. “I find it hard to believe that you haven’t participated in adultery before.”

“That’s not the point.”

But her lips were amused or trying for it. “And gay?”

“I have very little experience.”

“And you’ve never wanted to fuck Steve Rogers before?” It was ludicrous how easy she made that sound; as if the fact that he might or might not have developed an appreciation for Steve Rogers’ body meant that he didn’t need to address the moral ramifications of acting on her advice.

His head was filling up with big words and long objections, but his mouth was sputtering something that wasn’t exactly a laugh or a denial. His hand was clenched around the keys he’d just pulled out of his pocket and all those words stacking up in his skull weren’t making their way to this throat. 

No, it was Natasha looking at him with what she must have thought passed for pity these days. Her hands slid down her thighs and she stood up to face him. They were close as lovers, her body sliding into a soft stance, her hand sliding down his arm so her fingers were testing his pulse. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”

“I don’t,” he said (at last).

“Well, you and her have that in common.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony said as he pulled his arm back, “is this fun for you? Are you enjoying this? This is— Aren’t you his friend?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “Look.” (This next bit was the important part. You could tell by how her voice changed.) “If you told him that the only way to get his wife back was to have sex with you, he’d do it. If you told him that you thought your best chance to get her attention was to make him love you, he’d do it. He’d do whatever it took to get her back. So, tell him, or ask him, or don’t.”

No, Tony wasn’t going to ask him. He wasn’t going to tell him. He wasn’t going to put this crime on Steve (not yet, not until he had to, not until there really was no other way). It must have shown on his face, because Natasha looked at him with real sympathy. 

“You and her are the same person. So, remember that, whatever you’re willing to do to get her back to her husband, she’s willing to get you back to your— Pepper?” Tony nodded, and Natasha nodded with him. “It’s not personal.”

“It is personal. It wouldn’t work if it weren’t.”

Natasha sighed, stepped back, looked over her shoulder and then back at him. “I’ve got a flight.” But, more importantly, “never?”

“Never what?”

“You’ve never wanted to fuck Steve?”

“It’s hard to have sexual fantasies about a man who very obviously finds you a distasteful necessity. I like to save my free time for fantasizing about people who I actually enjoy being around.”

“So,” Natasha said, “Bruce?”

Tony rolled his eyes, but Natasha was grinning at him. “If I _had_ to pick a teammate,” he conceded. “Although, there’s some debate about whether or not he’d be able to participate. I have no sexual fantasies about Hulk.”

She nodded. “I’d fuck Thor.”

“Thor? I would have said Barton—I mean, before I would have said before.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes at that but didn’t ask what he meant. “I need someone that can keep up with me.” There was no telling how serious she was about that. No telling if she harbored secret desires to sleep with Bruce, or Clint or anyone. “Good luck,” she said. 

Yeah. “Thanks.”

# A SIDE

Tony had sat down at a computer three hours ago, heavy with half as much sleep as she needed, and said, “Friday get me the data about the switch.” Friday had been apologetic about the computer’s abilities to process and display that level of information, but they’d done their best to make do with the technology they had on hand. 

Tony shouldn’t have been in the hallway, the way Natasha shouldn’t have been, but they had both been there. Both of them with ears as big as elephants, listening to every word of the confrontation between Steve-and-Pepper. As far as condemnations from Steve went, this one was uninspired. All his words were fragile, each of them easy to break or bend whichever way she wanted them to go. But her Steve was made of steel, he was made of unbreakable conviction, and authority and when he was right, he was right, and no amount of pink-faced women could stare him down. 

This Steve was still searching for a good place to plant his feet.

No, Tony shouldn’t have listened in to a conversation that had nothing to do with her (really) but she had, and guilt or indecision or something a bit like loneliness moved her from the dubious comfort of her computer chair to the doorway of the office where Steven was frowning at the spread of papers across the table. Her knuckles tapped against the doorframe. “Can I come in?”

“You own the place.”

Tony rolled her eyes at that, walked over and pulled out a chair opposite him. He pulled the loose papers back into a tight stack and flipped them upside down. “I don’t,” she assured him. “Where I’m from we’re still using the tower. I have plans to repurpose this location to accommodate Avenger’s business but we’re not there yet.”

Steven shrugged. He straightened up in his chair and prepared himself for what he obvious thought was going to be another fight. “I don—”

“Pepper’s not angry at you,” she said. 

“She seemed pretty convincing.”

“Pepper is deceptively sweet, so people don’t expect her to be cruel, but she can be. She did do what she thought was best, and now she has to figure out how she’s going to tell her Tony. I get the feeling that he would consider this a betrayal.”

“You don’t?” Steven did; regardless of how he had no professed loyalty to her, or the man she’d replaced, there he was offended by the insinuation. “You seemed to view it as a betrayal.”

That was complicated because Pepper loved Tony, but Tony married Steve. There was a betrayal, but it wasn’t the same for her as it was for Pepper. “I’m very good at compartmentalizing. Neither one of us did our best in Sokovia.”

“I didn’t attack you.”

Tony drew a breath in through her nose and let it out again. “Did you believe that I was a threat to the people of Sokovia?”

Steven’s finger was pushing the paper forward and pulling it back again, over and over, shifting that paper the way he was working through the problem in his head. “No,” he said.

“Then why did you go?”

Because a pretty girl with sad eyes asked him to. Because they made it seem like it was important, like it was Steve’s responsibility. Because Steve looked at her like she confounded him, the way his eyes lingered on the glow of the arc reactor set just about center in her chest. How he couldn’t help himself but contemplate the curves of her body, how he sat there across from her treating every word like it was the very first time they’d ever met. (And it was, in a way.) But Steve didn’t say any of that, he said, “the concern wasn’t that you would endanger the welfare of the citizens of Sokovia but that you’d use the Iron Man armor and we couldn’t risk that.”

“Did you really think I would do that?”

Steve shrugged. “You’ve already used it. You built it specifically to use.”

Tony nodded, leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know what I would have done. We’ll never know. It didn’t feel like I was going to use the armor, but I may have.” 

“They,” Steve motioned outward toward the hallway and the small assembly of Avengers somewhere in the compound, “feel that if you were to cooperate and answer some basic questions, it would help all of us generate a feeling of trust. It would be an open forum, you wouldn’t be captive, you could decline to answer anything you didn’t feel comfortable answering.”

(No she couldn’t. Anything she didn’t tell them would be another reason they used to justify never trusting her.) “And what sort of questions do they plan on asking?” 

“They didn’t specify.”

Of course, they didn’t. Natasha was going to grill her about everything from the moment she was born to how she answered the last question. It was a _bad_ idea but it wasn’t the worst one they’d had since she woke up here. “What would you ask?”

“I hadn’t thought abou—”

“Don’t be a pussy, Rogers. If you could ask me anything, and I’d have to answer you for the sake of _team building_ , what would you ask me?”

Steve stared at her, teeth clenched, mouth pulled slightly down in a frown. He was contemplating a thousand answers to that question (working off a bit of steam about being called a pussy, if he was anything like his other world counterpart) so she was expecting anything in the world except for how soft his voice was when he said, “what’s your first name?”

“That’s what you’d ask?”

“You know mine.”

“The whole world knows your name.”

“Nobody here knows yours. If you don’t want to tell me you don’t have to—I just thought—”

“Antoinetta,” Tony said before Steve could start back pedaling. “I’d appreciate if you kept it between us. It’s not a bad name, it just doesn’t seem very much like it should be my name. And nobody’s called me by it since my Mother died.”

Steve nodded. “Sure,” he agreed. “It’s a nice name.”

She’d forgotten how stupid and cute Steve had been when he was still trying to figure out if finding a new woman attractive was an insult to his past loves. How delightfully unpracticed he was at small talk in small spaces. “Yeah,” she said, “thanks.” And also, “tell them I’ll do it. But only so we can focus on what’s important.”

# SIDE B

Alcohol was worthless, and despite the ads that seemed to be selling him an alternate truth, there had never really been anything too wholesome about drinking it. (Not that he’d had much of an opportunity or inclination even before the serum rendered drinking a non-event.) People of this fantastic modern time had a misconception about human nature; a bone-deep misunderstand about how people had always and would always be people. Steve had suffered through his share of arguments that started with _you wouldn’t understand_ as if addiction, and sex, and war, and suffering were modern inventions.

Steve had been two when some men in a moral crisis decided to make liquor illegal, and he’d grown up in the so-called roaring twenties but he didn’t remember it the way the movies like to play it. He may have, he may not have, ever seen a flapper in the flesh but he remembered his Mother in the kitchen crying over scraps of food. He’d grown up sick, poor, hungry with only a Mother to get them though. He’d lied his way into the army, he’d served in a war, he’d buried friends and fellow soldiers and he’d killed so many men he couldn’t adequately guess.

Steve had killed men with guns, and fists and cannons and bombs.

But the folks of this modern world splashed his face on whatever cause they thought was moral and just, they used his name in their speeches and they dedicated his service to his country as proof that abortion was a sin, or there was only one God, or guns were immoral, or guns were an American right, or—

One Million Moms thought he was a role model to aspire to, but that was probably because they had no idea he’d sucked Bucky’s dick in an alley when he was seventeen and feverishly stupid. 

“How do you pay for all the baseballs?” Tony called. He was leaning against the metal links of the cage behind Steve, nodding his head toward the ripped up remains of the afternoons silent victims. The machine had whirred to a stop while Steve went to get a drink out of the cooler, and he’d missed the moment the car pulled up in the drive entirely—too caught up in feeling petty and peevish.

“Probably the dildos,” Steve said. He finished off the water bottle he’d pulled out of the cooler but hadn’t drank.

Tony was trying to work out if that was an exaggeration or an outright lie, he settled into acceptance that didn’t quite settle neatly on his face. “She makes sex toys?”

“Not officially,” Steve said. He picked up another water bottle and ducked through the gate. He offered the water to Tony who shook his head. “They’re not,” how did one put it, “anatomically true to their inspiration. Although there was talk of doing it that way.”

“Wait,” Tony said, “there’s a Captain America dildo?”

“She couldn’t call it that without having to sue herself for copyright infringement. So, no. There’s an American Captain dildo.” He screwed the top off the water bottle and poured some of it on his hair. “It’s an unsurprisingly lucrative business.”

Tony leaned his back against the fence and just shook his head. “I have to build a time machine. I’ve been worried about alien invasions this whole time I could have—I could have funded the world.”

Steve shrugged. “Where did you go?”

“I went out for donuts.”

“Ten hours ago?”

Tony ran his tongue across his lips. That was a funny little quirk that his wife did when she was annoyed at him, but she didn’t want to say it. That slip of tongue had taught him when to push and when to give, and there it was, right on this man’s face. “I had to get some air.”

Steve nodded. “If I asked, would you tell me what Natasha said?”

“Are you asking?”

No. He wasn’t asking. Maybe because he had some idea and maybe because if it was safe for him to know she would have told him. “I don’t know.”

Tony seemed to take that as a negative. He slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket and looked over his shoulder at the field. There was hesitation in his voice when he said, “so what exactly do you do for fun?”

“In general?”

“With your wife?”

“Besides sex?”

Tony frowned at him. “Yes.”

“I don’t know that there is anything special. We just—spend time together. We do whatever it is that we are doing, we just do it together.” (And sometimes, they took very long baths in the big tub and she asked him to tell her stories about how he’d grown up. Sometimes, he took her out for ice cream and lazy walks. Once or twice they’d found themselves getting kicked out of a carnival for super human advantages.) 

“You’re very annoying,” Tony said. Then he leaned forward off the fence. “Do you ever just throw the ball? Play catch?”

“You want to play catch?”

“I want to not go back to the house,” Tony said. 

Steve took another drink of the water and set the bottle on the bench at his side. “Sure,” he said. “We can play catch. There’s always a spare mitt in the closet.” He tapped in the code to open it and pulled out the first mitt he thought would fit. There was a basket of baseballs and he picked up two (in case one of them got lost) to carry out onto the field. 

The sky was growing fat and lazy as the sun sank lower and lower toward the horizon. The day was almost exhausted, but the grass smelled fresh and green. There was a peaceful hum of annoying bugs that made it feel, very nearly, almost exactly like it was any other day he’d ever come here with his wife. As if she were just a step behind him with a bat over her shoulder, getting ready to challenge him to a contest. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you’re not ready,” Steve said, looking out at the field and not at Tony, “but whatever it is, I’ll do whatever will get her back. Don’t worry about me.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard,” Tony said. He stopped at Steve’s elbow. “But, Cap. Not everything is about you, is it?” Then he slipped his hand into the mitt and held out his free hand for one of the baseballs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't know there was an AU female Tony Stark in the comics, I found out after I chose the name for this story. 
> 
> Also sorry about the delay in posting. Life is hell and etc.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

# B SIDE

Muscle aches were their own sort of achievement. But, if he’d known that he was going to end up throwing a ball back and forth with a superhuman, he might have taken the precaution of taking a couple of pain pills before he got started. Maybe he would have stretched a bit more; not that it would have mattered. Both of his arms were hot and well-used, aggravated by the repetition of motion that throwing and catching the same ball required.

But Tony woke up in the guest bed, groaning over the pain in his shoulder without any recollection of any nightmare that should have startled him awake. The pain in his shoulder was annoying but not intolerable. (The nightmares were intolerable, and funny how foreign and unsettling it felt to wake up without one.) 

The house was completely still, save for the scuffle of dishes in the kitchen. Pepper had declined to work from this house today. (And good for her, maybe, if she had finally had enough.) That meant there was nobody to see him stop outside the kitchen except Jarvis (and Jarvis would probably keep his secrets, so long as nobody has any reason to ask). There was nobody to watch him look at himself in a well-placed mirror, to see him asking himself (one-more-time) if this was really something they were willing to do.

And why not, when a different Steve, from a different place, looked him right in the face and called him nothing. (How easy would it be to be nothing? To have no worries and no morals and no responsibility. Tony daydreamed of life how Steve seemed to think he lived it. Free from guilt.) 

“Good morning,” he said when he finally stepped into the kitchen. The smell of biscuits baking was a delicious, buttery smell. 

Steve was wearing a white T-shirt stretched across his chest and sweats he may or may not have slept in. He had a counter full of ingredients that he seemed to have hesitated over. There he stood with his hands folded around the edge of the counter, leaning his body in toward it, looking as if he were having his own version of a difficult moment while staring into a basket of eggs. “Morning,” he said with something like a smile. That quirk of his lips flexed through his whole body, straightened his back shifted how his weight was distributed over his feet. His hands dropped from the counter to rest on his hips. “Did you sleep well?”

“Better than I have in years.” Tony rubbed his sore shoulder, “how about you?”

“Good,” Steve agreed. He looked back at the spread of things one might make an omelet. “I was just making breakfast. I can make you something if you’re hungry.”

“Sure,” Tony agreed. He let that simmer in the air a bit, let Steve nod in agreement with his agreement and then added, “I could help. What was the plan?”

“I hadn’t decided. Eggs,” Steve motioned at the basket as if it needed to be identified. “Do you have,” maybe that didn’t sound right because he started all over with, “I don’t have a preference, so anything you want.” (That was charming in it’s own way, watching Steve trip over his sentences.)

“Omelets then,” Tony said. He went around Steve to get to the stove. “You chop, I’ll cook.”

They fell into it with no small talk, Steve reducing his pile of ingredients into little bowls of thoroughly chopped bits. Tony turned the individual parts into a cohesive whole just about in perfect time with the timer going off to announce the biscuits were ready. Steve set the table without being prompted and set the jugs of milk and juice on the table with two cups of coffee, the creamer and sugar. 

The only sound accompanying them sitting at the table was the scrape of chairs across the floor and the sound of metal forks on glass plates. It might have gone on forever, building up a fine head of steam into something awkwardly insurmountable if not for the way Steve hummed a little moan under his breath and looked across the table with complete sincerity to say, “this is really good.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Making omelets?” Steve asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I—” had taught himself the secrets of making eggs into something delicious because Pepper liked eggs and Tony had no personal opinion about most breakfast food one way or another. But that wasn’t a conversation for this breakfast table. “It caught my interest,” worked just the same. “What about you? Is there anything you make really well?”

Steve snorted, “no. I do okay. I wouldn’t starve but nothing like this,” he motioned at the plate and the half-devoured food on it.”

“Everyone’s good at something,” Tony said.

“I’m good at a few things, cooking’s not one of them.” He licked his lips and reached to pull his glass closer to him. “It doesn’t surprise me that you’d be good at it—she doesn’t cook much but when she does, she’s always good at it. That’s how her brain works, putting all the little pieces together in the right order to create something.” He poured himself a tall glass of milk. 

“So,” Tony said, rather than address what Tony Stark may or may not be good at, “I think we should get out of the house.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “All these walls are just starting to feel too claustrophobic.”

Steve held his glass between the table and his mouth, looked at him with a completely neutral expression while he worked out if he was being manipulated. (Or maybe that was a foregone conclusion, maybe he already knew he was being nudged toward something, maybe he was just trying to figure out if he were going to allow it.) “Sure,” he said after a pause, “I’ve been wanting to take the motorcycle out. It’s been a while since I’ve been home this long.”

“Good,” Tony said.

# A SIDE

She’d meant to take a shower, and maybe she was still going to, but right now right _this_ moment she was just—

It had started with her hand on the door, with her thumb running back and forth across the bathroom door lock that may as well been ornamental. It was as flimsy as a bit of paper when pit against the known strength of the people that lived in this compound. It wouldn’t have taken Steven more than a flinch of effort to break the handle into pieces. Maybe it would have delayed Natasha a few seconds, if she was feeling gracious enough to want to save the knob. 

Tony liked to think she’d moved past old fears, but there she was with her thumb half-pushing in the lock on the bathroom door, thinking how useless it was and how naked she’d be without clothes. There she was thinking about Yinsen again, about how he looked at her when he pushed the bucket of water across the floor toward her. He was brave in a dark place, somber and respectful but he knew like she knew, that her body was only safe as long as she could keep up the pretense of being useful.

A dark cave was a far cry from a cozy bathroom, but this place felt no more welcoming to her. She was no safer here than she had been there. (And hadn’t they proven that, Natasha with all her indifference, sitting in a chair not even six feet away watching Tony take a shower in nothing but her underwear.) 

Maybe that shouldn’t have mattered, not with all the leaked photos and videos of her youth. The whole world could see her naked in grainy pixels if they really wanted. Tony didn’t care, ninety-nine-percent of the time. It didn’t make a single bit of difference if she was covered head to toes or if she was wearing nothing but a scrap of something they called a bikini. Her body was a topographical map of her mistakes, the landscape of her chest alone was peaks and valleys, a combination of pretty scars like tourist spots and ugly marks they all collectively ignored. 

(Except Steve, when he had the time, and the patience, to trace all the ugly parts of her body she’d rather not show. When he assured her she was beautiful to him, no matter what.)

But that was different, that was her _choice_ to show or hide. There was no choice in this place, no more than the pretense of safety that a flimsy button lock offered her. 

She’d meant to take a shower, but there she was, sitting in the tub in her underwear, with a clingy tank sticking to her ribs, thinking that it was stupid to be afraid of a shower. To be afraid of the people beyond the door (to be afraid of anything in this stupid world) but not even the trackers under her skin could ease away the feeling.

(Be brave, be brave, be brave my little one, was her Mother’s voice always in her head. It was the way Mother had looked at her, when the men with the big cameras had come to take her picture, when Howard had started boasting of his daughter’s genius like it was unthinkable. Tony had defied the odds, as far as Howard was concerned, Tony had risen above her peers—and not because she was as smart as him, as capable, as—no because she was a girl, and she had done anything. Be brave, her Mother said to her. Because Mother knew then, that girls were _always_ girls (and never women) and they were not welcome in a man’s world.)

The rap against the door jarred her out of a stupor, jerked through her body so she banged her elbow against the tub. “Fuck,” she hissed to the cacophony of shampoo bottles tumbling out off their ledge.

“Are you okay?” That was Steven, through a door, leaning close enough to whisper. It was his shadow under the door.

“Fine,” Tony said.

“I’m sorry to—I said it could wait but,” he’d been outvoted. “Would three work for you? For our—”

“Team-building?” Tony suggested.

Steven didn’t want to agree with her, but he said, “yeah.”

It didn’t matter if it was three or four, or now or tomorrow. It only mattered that she was walking into an ambush, being guided along by a man who couldn’t imagine the worst of anyone even though he’d seen it enough times. There had to be a special place in hell for men born of the sort of naivety that Steven lived by. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be there.”

“Conference room A,” Steven said.

“Yup.” And he went away, took his shadow and the implied weight of his body against the door with him. She heard the door to the bedroom close, heard voices in the hall. It was just her and her chilly legs and her cold arms, sitting half-naked and stupid in the bottom of a bathtub.

# B SIDE

Steve had always loved motorcycles. (Bucky had said, more than once, and very recently, that his love of motorcycles came from a childhood deprived of bicycles.) If he had the means, the time, and the dedication, he might have collected them. He could have filled a garage with every version left on this earth and he might have taken the time to learn how to ride them all from the thin and lean to the tank on two wheels. 

But Tony’s view on motorcycles was less romantic than Steve’s. Her view was best expressed with nothing but her face visible inside the Iron Man armor, standing in the wreckage of his last motorcycle, with her arms raised in defeat and outrage. “You’re _killing_ me, Rogers,” was her view on the whole debacle. Sometimes it was the little bits and pieces that were all that remained of the machine running through her spread fingers. Her head shaking back and forth about how he’d thrown it at someone, or jumped off it, or once (very memorably) slid it under a closing door to prop it open long enough to break in. That bike had been crushed in the center, separated into two very distinct halves that she had dragged back onto the jet and had mounted in the Avenger’s tower. (The plaque beneath it called, _the price of impatience_.)

But Steve liked the feeling they gave him, the sensation of freedom and possibility that was only ever felt on the open road, with nothing between him and the wind but a leather jacket and a good helmet. (And really, he could have gone without the helmet. Safety sometimes felt like paranoia in this modern world.) His wife didn’t need a motorcycle for that when she’d built herself a suit and taught herself to fly. She could see the whole world if she wanted (and she had, when she flew through a hole in space); there was no wonder of the open road once you’d touched the sky with your fingers.

He’d never driven very far with anyone sharing the seat with him. Almost never since the war, and even then it was short distances and quick exits from the Howling Commandos. Maybe once he’d convinced Bucky to drive with him for just the purpose of doing it. Maybe once, when the war was still young enough they weren’t numb to the horror. He’d driven them without any destination in mind, with Bucky’s arm looped around his chest, with bodies clutched intimately close. 

Bucky had been hot against his back, leaning up against his shoulder. _Are you ever going to let me drive?_ he’d asked back when his voice still had humor. His thick-gloved fingers were breaking through the buttons of Steve’s shirt, scratching gently across his bare skin as his breath fogged up all good-common sense Steve had in his whole brain. They’d hit a rock, or a branch, or a mountain (Steve certainly hadn’t seen whatever they’d hit) and slid off the road. Bucky was laughing flat on his back, laughing like he had when they were still young. His face was pink under the dirt and the half-grown beard he either never shaved or grew out. Steve’s leg had gotten caught by the motorcycle but it hadn’t felt important when he dragged it out and crawled across the dirt to grab Bucky by the shirt.

_Are you hurt_ he’d demanded. There was Bucky, flat on his back with his knees spread and there was Steve leaning over him like they were going to do something about the sensation caught between them. That magnetic field that always seemed to drag him in. (That was _lust_ , according to his wife. _Attraction_ according to Natasha. But it felt hot and magic when Steve was finally strong enough to do something about it.) In a perfect world, if Steve knew then what he knew now (about love, about sex, about how there was never enough time) he would have grabbed Bucky by the face, he would have kissed him until they were breathless from it. He would have chanced that Bucky would _want_ him the way Steve wanted him; but he hadn’t done it then. Steve had been a blushing idiot in 1944.

It was twenty-fifteen now. Steve was an idiot but he wasn’t blushing anymore. 

No, he was standing by the side of a long, empty road, watching Tony squatting next to the motorcycle that had sputtered to a stop about five minutes ago. He was enjoying the sweat drying on his temples, the wind through his hair, and the recalibrating heat of his body. (Now that there was no Tony leaning against his back, no warmth and weight of arms around his chest.) “Can you fix it?” he asked.

“Well,” Tony looked up at him without standing, “no. Why exactly are you riding a motorcycle that uses gas? Didn’t I basically invent clean energy?” He stood up then, dusted his hands on his thighs as he moved, and smiled smugly at him.

“I,” he looked at the bike and not at Tony, “I kept crashing the bikes she made.”

“Crashing?” Tony set his helmet on the seat of the bike behind him. “I saw Steve use the last one I made him like a boomerang. It didn’t come back,” Tony assured him. 

“They’re very light,” Steve said in his defense. That wasn’t even necessarily true. They didn’t feel light when he threw them, it was more that the weight of them wasn’t great enough to deter him. (That was an entirely different problem, as his wife liked to point out.) “So, you can’t fix it.”

“Its out of gas,” Tony said.

Well shit. 

“Can’t you just carry it to the nearest gas station?”

“That’s more of a party trick,” Steve said. He kicked a few pebbles away and squinted down the road. There was nothing as far as he could see, in either direction. Even if he wanted to carry it, and he could, he didn’t want to carry it forever. “Did you bring a phone?”

“No,” Tony said. “The plan was to get out of the house, not to bring the house with me.”

“A phone would be useful,” Steve countered. “It’s been a while since we passed anything that way,” he pointed back to where they’d come from. “I guess we go forward.” He didn’t carry the bike but grab the handle bars to start rolling it along the side of the road. 

Tony huffed a sigh and went around the bike to take the handle bar of that side. “I can’t believe you didn’t check the gas.”

“I don’t think about it,” Steve countered. “It’s usually done for me.” By his wife, who had the tendency to think three-steps-ahead at all times. Tony was just smirking to himself, shaking his head with pink in his cheeks. “I’m human,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, “I just never thought you’d admit it.”

# A SIDE

Someone, probably one of Hill’s assistants, had set up the conference room. They’d set the chairs like an inquisition the clear implication that Tony was _alone_ on her side of the table, facing a full panel of inquisitors. There were water bottles and scratch pads of notebook paper at each seat. The screens at the head of the room were playing soothing music over the scene of water babbling across rocks.

Removed of the pretense of many comforts, it was still the scene of a future battle. It was one-two-three-four-five ( _six_ , if you included him) against one.

“I’d wear the dress with the short skirt if I was her,” Natasha said. She appeared from nowhere (as a fully-trained assassin was known to do), sliding into the spare space of the doorway without having the decency to have made her footsteps loud enough to announce her arrival. Her face was perfectly blank as she look at the table, her whole body devoid of any emotion. 

(Of course it was, this was _business_. Business wasn’t personal. It was just necessary.)

“Why’s that?” Steve asked.

“Because she has nice legs,” Natasha said.

Steve stepped inside rather than try to turn enough to look at Natasha’s face while they were co-existing in a narrow doorway. He crossed his arms over his chest, “what difference does that make?”

Natasha looked at him like she felt sorry for him. “Jesus, Steve. I know you’re old fashion but you do have a dick, don’t you?”

“I don’t think that kind of lang—”

“I’m not Stark, Steve. I’m not amused by your out of date morals—especially not when I’ve heard what you mutter under your breath when you think nobody is close enough to hear you.” She stepped into the room, mirroring his posture with her arms over her chest. Natasha looked at him like she was _daring_ him to say something, to do something, and there he was trying to defend himself from accusations nobody had made. “She’s been attacking you since the moment she showed up here. She’s used her fists, her words and her body to distract and assault you from the _first_ minute she showed up.”

“Damn it, Natasha.” (It was his fault for believing when she’d told him it wasn’t an attack, when he’d let himself believe they could just talk it out, that it could be resolved amicably.) “I don’t care what she’s done to me. Since it was me she did it to, I think I have more say than you—let it go. We have to move _forward_.”

Natasha shook her head, “she’s not Bucky.”

“And?”

“I didn’t understand why you let him almost kill you either—but this woman’s abilities and loyalties are concerns bigger than just whether or not you can take a punch, Steve. She has access to everything that Stark’s ever made—she is _Stark_ and I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. But _at least_ he’s predictable. At least we know what we can expect from him. She hasn’t behaved in a predictable, rational way since she arrived—other than attacking you.”

“And you think this will help?” he demanded, spread his arm to motion at the six chairs stacked against one, “you think attacking her back will help?”

“I think it’s important to know if she’s an ally. I think she knows how to protect herself and how to keep her secrets. I don’t want to _attack_ her,” Natasha said (even as she looked every bit like she very much did want to attack Tony), “I want to know if I can trust her.”

That sounded very much like something one might say after they’d imprisoned a woman they couldn’t break, after they’d made her feel unsafe and unwelcome. After they’d left her in the cold, and the dark, and made her question the faces of her friends. After they’d humiliated her and manipulated her and still _failed_ to break her. It was a righteous covering for a cruel purpose. Steve shook his head, “and what if this doesn’t work?”

But it would. Natasha looked at him with pity, she said, “we’ll have an answer after today—either she’s an ally or she’s not. You need to be ready to deal with it, no matter how it turns out. You need to really think if her pretty legs and her sad brown eyes are worth more to you than this team.”

(How had it come to that? To _this_? To the feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face.) “You think—”

“I’m not the only one.”

That was worse. (Who else was there to think such a stupid thing? Sam? Rhodey? Pepper? It wasn’t Hill, or maybe it was, with how she looked at him with a smirk at the edge of her lips, like the way Natasha did, like they understood something he couldn’t.) “Attacking her won’t help anything,” he said. “She’s made that clear.”

“It’s just questions,” Natasha said. “If she answers, that’s all it will be.”

And if she didn’t, well, then it would definitely be an attack.

# B SIDE

Steve liked the way cash money felt in his wallet. It was more familiar and more real to him than plastic cards and credit machines that traded money for goods without any one ever seeing the money. Steve liked to see the money. (And Tony thought it was hilarious, how much he hated not having money in his pocket, and how he distrusted banks.) It was useful for situations like this, by the side of the road, not too far from a convenience store (that wasn’t convenient enough to have gas pumps). The day had progressed from warm to hot and dragging the motorcycle had changed from a minor hassle to major annoyance. 

Tony had been covered in seat from his hair slicked to his scalp to the shirt sticking to his back. He’d looked at the convenience store the way a starving man looked at a plate of food. “I could get us something to drink,” he’d said, “nobody recognizes me.”

It was hard to recognize someone who didn’t exist. Steve had handed over the money from his pocket and Tony had crossed the road to get them drinks but it had been fifteen minutes and he still wasn’t back. Steve weighed the merits of crossing the street to join him, considered how likely it was that someone would recognize him, care enough about it to take a photo and create problems that Pepper wouldn’t want to have to deal with. 

(It was funny how very few people actually recognized him in a crowd. Without the shield, he was no more remarkable than any other man, it seemed.) 

Tony came back just before Steve could convince himself to take the chance. He was carrying a half-empty water bottle in one hand and two sacks dangling from his elbow. His face looked freshly washed and his hair was damp but no longer glued to his head. “They had a bathroom,” he said. Then he pulled a second water bottle out of the bag to hand to him. “I got sandwiches, I wasn’t sure what you ate—so I just got what didn’t look like a potential breeding ground fo—” He must have glanced up at that moment, seen Steve swallowing the last of the water and been struck silent by that. Rather than say something about it, he just reached into the bag again and pulled out another. “food poisoning.”

“Sounds good,” Steve said. He screwed the cap back on the first bottle and tucked it under his arm, so he could open the second one. “This is the part where she reminds me drinking water too fast can kill me.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. He pulled one of the sandwiches out of the bag to hand to him. “Well, you’re a big boy. If you want to kill yourself with water who am I to stop you?” He shuffled sideways enough to hang the mostly empty bag off the handlebar of the motorcycle. “Your wife might not appreciate it when she gets back, but I support your decisions even when they’re stupid.”

Steve snorted at that. He took a reasonable drink of water and closed the bottle again. There was a bit of grass that looked soft enough to sit on, so he sat and watched Tony standing by the motorcycle unwrapping his own sandwich. “She says the same thing. _Steve. This is stupid. Call me if you need me_.”

“Sounds like a perfect relationship,” Tony said. He sat next to Steve, crossed his legs and laid the water bottle in his lap. “So,” he said mostly to his sandwich, “how did you end up with her? Did she pursue you? Did you—” he paused there to cycle through the choices, to find one that would sum up what he imagined Steve would be like if he were trying to date someone, and came up with, “woo her?”

“Woo?” 

“Court?”

“No,” Steve said. “I mean,” that wasn’t entirely true. He had eventually come to the realization that he liked his time better spent with her than away from her. He did realize that he craved her in all aspects, her mind and her body and her naked skin. He had realized that before they were married, he had made plans to figure out how to express his desire for her with more success than his fumbling attempts ever seemed to amount to. “I didn’t intend to fall in love with her. I didn’t even like her when she showed up—that wasn’t her fault. I didn’t like anyone. But, she took over the Avengers, she asked me to help her and I don’t—it’s,” he drew in a breath and huffed a sigh. “All I’ve wanted since I was a child was to be able to _help_ people. To be able to fight to make things better for people that couldn’t fight for themselves. I’ve been that person, the one that can’t protect themselves. The one that gets beat up in allies, and at school, the one that didn’t go to the dance because what’s the point? I’ve been helpless.”

“Everyone’s been helpless,” Tony said. Not to undermine Steve’s point, but like a fragile offering, a half-expressed _I’ve been helpless too_. “Not everyone signs up for government experiments.”

“Well. Erskine offered me a chance to get everything I’d ever wanted—a chance to prove that the sick skinny kid shouldn’t have to stay behind just because he might not keep up. A chance to prove I was worth the same as fat mouthed assholes like Hodge.” He was going to explain who Hodge had been but Tony was nodding, why not, he must have read the same biographies that _she_ had. “I thought I was doing what I wanted, I thought I was saving the world. And I did, I guess. I died to do it, and I woke up and the world I thought I saved—it still went to shit.”

Tony laughed at that.

Steve smiled, but his chest was warming up to something hot and hurtful. “The people I loved still suffered. Some things are better, some things are worse. I woke up, and I’m a cog in a machine. I had no purpose, no autonomy—maybe I never had it, but it felt like I did. It felt like I’d finally gotten respect, and purpose, and my life was going how I had wanted it, but it was just _gone_. Everything was gone. SHIELD treated me well, but not with respect, now how I wanted it. They treated me like a bomb. Like something that could be used against the enemy and carefully stored. But Tony—”

Tony had been on fire with a rage that felt like an echo of Steve’s own soul. She had built an empire of superheroes out of spite, just to prove that she could. She’d branded them and sold them to the world, and when everything was primed, and ready, she had stepped aside. She had given him authority over his own life, over his own power. She’d treated him like a man, not a tool, and he hadn’t realized how desperately he’d been looking for that feeling until he’d found it in her.

“Fury didn’t recruit me,” Tony said. “I was too egotistical. Didn’t play well with others. He wanted the suit, not me.”

“The suit’s useless without the man inside it,” Steve said. That was too sore a subject to comment on any more so he just shrugged. “She probably did more wooing than I did. She built the diamond. She took me out to eat a lot—I guess that was dating? I thought we were just building a, what do you call it—a rapport?” 

Tony snorted. 

“I knew it was headed somewhere, and I wanted it to, but I still didn’t expect her to unbutton my pants when she did.” (A fact that amused his wife to this very day.) “We had talked about it—about sex, because she said I needed to try it and I said it wasn’t important.”

“Was she right?” Tony asked.

“As a general rule she’s always right.” He looked down at his sandwich, tried to force himself to lift it to his mouth and failed to do more than flinch his hand slightly upward. Instead, he looked at Tony. “If I had to choose between never spending another chaste moment with my wife, and never having sex with her again, I’d rather have the time than the sex. The sex is good, I like it, but it’s not the reason I love her.”

“I hate you,” Tony said with a smile on his face. He rolled the wrapping on his sandwich down farther. “I love Pepper,” he said (mostly to himself), “I thought I could spend my whole life with her, at least what’s left of it— But, I don’t think I make her happy anymore. I don’t think she’d leave me. I don’t want her to but that’s selfish. To want her to stay when I don’t know how to make her happy. I don’t know how to be the man she needs me to be—and, I don’t know that I’m even the man I was before, that I could be that man. But I don’t want to lose her either.”

“You should tell her,” Steve said.

Tony snorted. “I don’t think so, Cap. Our relationship doesn’t work like that. Besides, she’s busy—”

Steve didn’t push, because pushing Tony never got anyone anywhere. He lifted his sandwich, tried to make himself take a bite and lowered it again. “Did you find out if there’s a gas station nearby?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “about a mile that way.”

That wasn’t so bad. Steve wrapped his sandwich up again. “I’ll go get the gas? You can stay with the bike?”

“Sure,” Tony said. He leaned back on the grass, “seems like a safe place to take a nap.” His eyes were squinting into the sunlight, looking directly at Steve with a smile on his face. Just for a second, and for no reason at all, he looked so completely like Steve’s wife that it seemed like a mirage had settled into his place. “Just don’t take all day.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Of course.”

# A SIDE

Tony did not bother to paint on her mask. Standing in front of the mirror wearing nothing but her underclothes, she hadn’t seen the point in bothering. There was _nothing_ to gain because it would have seemed like an evasion. It would have proved the point that Natasha seemed set on making.

Maybe things were different where Tony was from because there had never been a struggle over Steve’s loyalty. It had never happened that Natasha had a moment of worry about Tony leading her husband down the wrong path. For better, or worse, Tony had met Steve first, had fought him first, had fought beside him first, had secured his respect before Natasha had been more than a shadow in the background. 

Natasha had walked in on a relationship in progress when the Avengers were created. Even if she was fond of Steve (and she was, so terribly biased toward him) she was a smart enough woman to know that there wasn’t even a sliver of space in Steve’s heart to seed a single doubt about what Tony stood for. But things were different here, Natasha had Steve’s loyalty, and his trust (for better or worse) and she _loved_ him. She loved him just enough to do whatever it took to make sure Steve was seeing Tony for what she really was:

A threat.

(And Tony was. She had been since she showed up in the training yard to break his arm. Since she laughed off their fear tactics and their security measures. She’d been unintimidated. She’d been disrespectful.)

So, she went to the conference room with nothing on her face but her skin. She wore what they’d given her, a pair of jeans, a shirt that was slightly too long at the waist. She accepted the water they left for her as she sat in the chair they put out for her. She sat across from them, watching their faces watching her.

“Thank you for agreeing to this meeting,” Hill said.

Tony looked at Steve looking at whatever designs his worrisome pen was making on the paper they’d left for him. (Steve was a nervous doodler, a man who must have drawn little men on motorcycles in the margins of his test papers.) “Well, I was asked so nicely.”

Pepper had dressed for a corporate row, she was as sleek as a new knife. Her face was pink as she looked at Tony but it didn’t nothing to distract from how many hours she’d spent awake waiting for this moment. 

Rhodey was leaning forward, opening his mouth to add, “and we just want to stress that our only intention here is to clear the air, to make sure that everyone is on the same page so we can put everything that’s happened behind us.”

Everyone but Natasha who had appointed herself as guardian and protector. 

“Lets just get this started,” Tony said.

“Sure,” Hill agreed. “I think we’d like to start with the basics, your parents, your education—”

Tony didn’t roll her eyes when she wanted to. “My Father was Howard Stark. My Mother was Maria Stark. I was born on May 29, 1970 in Manhattan.” She rattled off biographical facts of her childhood, when and where’d she’d been shipped off to boarding school. How her Mother had taught her the piano, how Howard had promoted her achievements (when she made them) and only when she arrived at MIT did Rhodey pipe up to say:

“That’s enough,” and that wasn’t because they were tired of hearing it, but because Rhodey had secrets like thorny things buried in her time at MIT. 

“So,” Natasha summed up, “everything is basically the identical to our Tony.”

“Yes,” she said. “As far as I can tell, our paths didn’t diverge until the press conference. Shortly after that I realized the palladium was poisoning me and I would die. I like Pepper but I was never in love with her. I didn’t have the opportunity to drive the racecar in Monaco because Natasha told me about the message my father left me.”

Natasha was frowning about that. “Why?”

“My guess is because she disagreed with the decision to let me continue thinking I was going to die just to see what I’d do about it. That does seem like a dick move,” she looked down the table to where Hill was sitting without any sense of shame or guilt. Maybe she hadn’t been involved in that choice or maybe she had, either way, it didn’t keep her up at night. “Fury’s famous for dramatic dick moves so it’s not a surprise.”

“When did you meet Steve?” Natasha asked.

“I met Steve about a month after he woke up. So, November 2011. We met in New York while he was still living in what I assume is one of SHIELD’s halfway houses for formerly frozen individuals?” 

Hill rolled her eyes. “When did you stop drinking?”

“My last drink was my birthday in 2012.”

“And why did you stop?” Rhodey asked.

Because the alcohol had never done what she wanted it to do. It hadn’t made her parents’ death easier to bear. It made the world fuzzier. It hadn’t made it easier to sleep. It hadn’t cemented the boxes of regrets and mistakes she kept hidden in her head into place. It had only made her dull enough (now and again) to believe it had done any of that. Because she’d almost died (more than once) and no amount of alcohol could make it _okay_ , could make it _bearable_. “The benefits no longer outweighed the risks.”

It was hard to keep up with all their faces, to catalogue their expressions and rank them from least to greatest threats. Sam was no less dangerous for being disinterested. Steve was no less a liability for how he frowned at their poking questions. He could frown and frown and frown, but they’d find a question where his curiosity outweighed his objection. 

“Who is the leader of the Avengers?” Natasha asked.

“I am.” Simple answers were the best answers.

“Who decides what missions you take?” Hill asked.

“We have a risk assessment branch that catalogues areas that possibly need our intervention, they present the options to the team and we decide where we could be of most use. Primarily we choose targets that are related to super human threats. We tend to stay clear of anything that could be handled diplomatically or with less force.”

“Who is the team?” Sam asked.

“Primary members are Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor—if he’s on the planet. Bruce, sometimes Hulk if we need him. We also borrow War Machine at times, we have employed other members on trial basis or when their expertise is of use.” 

Pepper was frowning at her from the end of the table, staring right at her half-truths. She didn’t like any of this, not the questions, not the answers, not the way Natasha had folded her hands in front of her while she stared at Tony with single-minded focus. “Do you protect your team?” she asked.

“We protect each other,” Tony said.

Natasha’s face didn’t change at all, not even a slight flinch of her eyelashes, but all the same she must have stumbled across a weakness in the things that hadn’t been asked or answered. Natasha said, “what about your personal relationships?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nat.” Steve objected.

“Are you dating Pepper?”

“No.”

“Natasha it doesn’t matter,” Steve started again.

“Bruce?”

“No.”

“Rhodey?”

“That’s enough,” Steve said. 

It wasn’t. Natasha had found an open wound and she was going to dig in until someone screamed. It must not have been worth upsetting Steve because she leaned back in her seat. Hill was writing nothing on her pad of paper, hardly looking up at all, but she managed to take over because it was her voice and her plain-faced curiosity asking, “are you married?”

Pepper looked at Steve, because Pepper _knew_ , because she didn’t want to _say_ , or maybe because she thought Steve would object again. It didn’t the why because every person at the table had seen it, (all except Steve).

“Yes,” Tony said.

“To who?” Rhodey asked.

“I don’t see how it’s relevant.” Tony didn’t want to say, not here, not like _this_. (Or ever, in this world.) 

Pepper cleared her throat and sat up forward. “Does your marriage interfere with your—”

“Who are you married to?” Natasha asked.

“She doesn’t have to answer that,” Steve said. But it had gone sideways and there was no way to get away from it now.

Rhodey was looking at her with squinty eyes, Sam was perking up from his disinterested stupor. Natasha could smell the blood in the water, and Pepper was helpless to stop it from unfolding. (That wouldn’t stop her from trying.) Hill had already arrived at the obvious conclusion that Steve wasn’t going to be able to figure out without someone flat-out saying it. 

“No it doesn’t interfere with my management of the team,” Tony said to Pepper. She looked at Natasha, only at her, met her eyes with unashamed fearlessness that she couldn’t feel inside her own chest. It didn’t matter if it was real so long as the front was real, she said, “I’m married to Steve Rogers.”

All of them were rocked with shock at that, staring at her like it was this (of all things) that made her a liar, but it was Steve at the end of the table, slapping his hand against the table, looking _betrayed_ that hurt the most, it was his voice in a knee-jerk anger he probably couldn’t even explain himself, saying, “bullshit, prove it.”

# B SIDE

It was after-business hours before they made it back covered in the dust of the open road. They came back quiet and strange, rattled by how easy it was to spend time doing nothing but breathing the same air. Steve had stood at the bottom of the stairs next to him, fumbling through something like a thank you.

“It was almost like normal,” is what he said when he meant, _I needed a break_. After this it was back to worry, loneliness and anger. But today had been ludicrous by the side of the road. 

“You smell, Rogers,” was what he said in response. It was a little bit of space where he could catch his breath. Just enough that Steve smiled politely and retreated up the stairs. Enough that the house settled around him, sagging into place the way he sagged into the couch. 

Pepper came out of the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea (judging by the smell) with her tablet resting on her arm. She set her cup on the table and went through all the motions of getting ready to work on something. With her white-fingered-hand clasped like claws over the top of the binder holding her tablet, she looked as peaceful as an irritated dragon. He could almost see the fire through the edge of her smile. “Its not my business,” wasn’t going to make sense with what she said next, “except that she is my friend, and what is in her best interests is important to me.”

“What?” Tony asked.

“You know, if you do this,” her hand didn’t lift a centimeter to motion at the stairs, at Steve, at his attempts at seduction, “you’re giving her up. Tony might understand it, if she really can feel your intentions or emotions like you say, she’ll understand it. Steve will forgive you if it gets his wife back, but— I wouldn’t. She won’t. Even if she understands why you did it.”

Yes, he understood that. He’d taken it into account. “She’ll be better off without me. Didn’t you say that?”

“No.”

“No,” Tony agreed, “no you said I’ve never fought for anything in my life. That I’ve never tried.”

“I was angry,” Pepper said. (That was an understatement.) “I was wrong about that. I’m not wrong about this.”

Tony sighed, shrugged. “What would rather I do? Go back to the lab, look at the numbers for a while longer? Compare what we were doing the night we disappeared? The weather? Look for cosmic signs that aren’t there? Would it be better if I preserved my chances with my girlfriend while he loses hope of ever seeing his wife again?” 

“I’d rather not be asked to choose.”

Tony snorted, pulled himself up so he was sitting forward again. “That’s because you know what you’d choose. He loves her. He deserves to get her back.” It was simple to think of it that way. 

Pepper relaxed back into her seat, nodded to herself and the tablet screen. “It should matter what you deserve too,” she said quietly, without looking up at him. “You should matter too. You can’t ignore that.”

He could; he had every intention of doing just that. “I know what I’m doing,” was the biggest lie he’d told in recent months. Another in a long series of choices he wasn’t sure he could defend. (And he wouldn’t, if he made it home, he’d lay it all out for his Pepper, and he’d let her make up her own mind about what she could and couldn’t forgive. He wouldn’t say a single word to defend himself. Because he had thought it through and he’d still made the same choice.) “I’m taking a shower.”

“If it brings her back, even if your Pepper can’t forgive it—I’ll remember. I’ll forgive you for her,” Pepper said when his feet were on the stairs. She was looking down when he looked back, acting as if she’d said nothing. It was safer that way, for both of them.

# A SIDE

There was no immediate answer to his demand, no outward reaction at all. The whole table had erupted in noise, but Tony was sitting still, hands folded in her lap, head turned to look at him. Without make-up, there was nothing to hide the way her cheeks flushed, how her jaw clenched, how a ripple seemed to go through her body from the jump of the muscle in her jaw to her feet shifting how they were laying flat on the floor. 

Her silence was a warning, a quietly extended olive branch, offering him a heartbeat’s worth of time to rethink his choice. It was just enough time to realize he’d made a mistake, and not nearly enough time to figure out how to fix it. There wasn’t even time to breath in before her chair turned and there she was facing him with both hands clasped together and resting on the table in front of her.

“Prove it?” she repeated. “You want me to _prove it_ , Steven? What would you like to know? What is it that I could possibly say that would convince you that there is a world where you would lower yourself to marry _me_?” She didn’t even pause to make a show of thinking in through. “Do you want to know how big your penis is, Steven? Do you want to know what you did the first time I put my hand on your dick? Give me a tablet and a few minutes, I’ll draw you a step-by-step of the day I took your virginity. Maybe,” she dragged her chair forward a few inches, “I should tell them about your birth mark? About the freckles on your thigh. You think that’s what would convince you, oh great and fearless leader?”

“Tony,” he said.

“No?” She pulled the chair forward another inch. It was a simple matter of pushing her foot forward, and dragging herself forward. She was staring him down, unflinching with every word. “That wouldn’t work because anyone with a decent understanding of search engines and an internet connection could tell you exactly what kind of freckles you have on your body. Because Erskine’s fellow scientists were curious monsters with cameras. Because they took pictures of every single inch of your body—because your pal Natasha didn’t look through the files she dumped on the internet. Your pictures are everywhere, Steven. All that’s missing is your face but anyone who cares can figure out who’s naked ass belongs to subject 1776 can’t they?”

“That’s enough,” Natasha snapped from the side.

“Why? Tony demanded. She looked at Natasha, “why is it enough now? You wanted to know, he wants me to prove it—”

“Tony,” Pepper whispered.

“No,” Tony cut in, “that wouldn’t work because anyone could know those things, what is something you wouldn’t tell anyone else? What is something you’d keep to yourself, something you’d only tell your wife? You wet the bed when you a kid, you hated the press tour that made you famous but you loved how people recognized your face everywhere you went—No,” her fingers snapped, “lets tell them about Bucky.”

“Stop,” Steve said.

“We’ll tell them about your best buddy Bucky, about how you were in love with him, how Captain America, the good old fashion American boy got on his knees in a dirty alley and—”

Steve slapped his hand on the table and Tony jumped in her seat, she rolled with it, got up to her feet to slap both her hands on the table not so far from him. She was livid, all stretched white cheeks and pink-red-rage. Her voice was an unending assault.

“Bucky could have had anyone in the world, Steve. You knew it then, you know it now, he could have had you if he wanted and he _didn’t_. Tell me what you want to know, Steven, I’ve got all your secrets right _here_ ,” she shouted at him with her hand raising to motion at her head. He could see it in her face, in her eyes, there was no lie in the words. She knew more about him than anyone else in the room, she knew it _all_. Maybe she’d made promises to another man about how she’d keep his secrets safe but those promises belonged to some other Steve, not to him. 

No, not to him. Not to the idiot that had asked her to prove it. Not to the one that hadn’t protected the man she wasn’t. The one that didn’t measure up to her husband. Tony hadn’t promised him a fucking thing, not one fucking thing, except that she wouldn’t ever give. She was tireless, and she’d never stop pushing, kicking, shoving and shouting her ugly words at him. “Fine,” Steve said. “Fine.” There was nothing else to say, nothing else to add, nothing to gain by staying so he didn’t. 

The hallway was quieter before the door opened, before the spill of footsteps and curious stares that followed him. Nobody spoke, Steve didn’t look back to see who had tried to follow. He didn’t run, he didn’t walk, he just _moved_ , away from Tony’s furious face and the terrible things she’d said.

(But she had done what he asked, as cruelly as she could, she had proven it. In another, strange world, he had married this woman and he’d trusted her with everything.)


	21. Chapter 21

# B SIDE

Pepper’s words had wormed under his skin, they had squirmed and wriggled in the wet space between the surface and his guts, waking him up from stale nightmares to remind him that _he should matter_. To remind him what he was giving _up_ ; and to offer him the not-so-comforting comfort of knowing that a woman who couldn’t bring herself to look at him with anything but reluctant pity would forgive him.

Of course, she would. People were always forgiving when the outcome benefited them. This Pepper would forgive him, because restoring the woman that belonged here put the whole world back into the order it was meant to be in. She’d forgive him because she had never leaned into his body with a sigh in her throat, whispering how happy she was that he’d decided to join her for a family reunion. She’d never gotten into argument with him over bowls of Butter Pecan at two in the morning, arguing about whether or not _creamier_ was better in ice cream. She’d never dug her nails into his arms when she was startled at the movie playing on the big screen. (She’d never dug her nails into his back, gasping his name like a prayer, when they got the rhythm right.) 

No, she’d never walked in on him trying to get the suit off, she’d never had tears in her eyes and disbelief in her voice when she asked him if those were bullet holes. (Maybe _her_ but never _him_.) She had never been infected with a virus like lava, threatening to boil her from the inside out. She’d never been kidnapped. Never killed a man in cold blood to save him. She’d never asked him to make a choice between the suits and her. He’d never made that choice here.

The world was about choices.

 _This_ world had gone easy on consequences, it had been forgiving to the Tony that lived her. She had never gone to Monaco, but she’d built the Suitcase Armor. It must be collecting dust in her attic, another one of her ideas that had seemed almost necessary and never ended up being needed. No, because Natasha had seen something worthy in this Tony and she’d handed the cure to the thing that was killing her.

This Tony had never lived with the fact that she was going to die, slowly and painfully. She’d never had enough time to divide up her belongings among friends (and to realize, how few friends she had, and how little time she had for them). 

What Tony wanted, really wanted, was a moment. Just one moment, just one single fucking minute to himself, inside his own head, one moment to think of anything at all that wasn’t related to (how cold, how dark, how endless space was. How unprepared they were, how fragile and how helpless) but there was no space left. 

But not this Tony. Her project files were filled with back-ups and just-in-cases. No. She had time, space and stability to create for the sake of it. (Tony thought, alone in the lab, he really should add a few files in with hers. A few ideas he’d been nursing for a while, a few he knew worked how they were needed. A few back up plans for what happened if Thor’s baby brother decided to give conquering the place another go.)

“Sir, Captain Rogers is appr—”

“I can hear,” Tony said.

Steve entered the lab without a shirt, with a towel thrown over one glistening shoulder, carrying two cups of coffee in his hand. He was wearing sweats with no shoes, creating an unfair sensation of domesticity when he held out the second cup with an almost smile, “good morning.”

(This wasn’t fair either. The way Steve looked at him, how he must have looked at her.) “Thanks,” seemed better than screaming at Steve for things that weren’t his fault. “Visit a sauna?”

“Huh?” Steve looked down at his chest, at how he _shimmered_ and scratched one nervous hand through his damp hair. “No. Gym. I woke up early, I couldn’t sleep.” He sipped his coffee, looked at the Suitcase Armor’s file spinning in holographic space. “I don’t remember that one.”

Tony leaned back in the chair, “that one was before you.”

“Did you and her build a lot of the same ones?” He looked around to find anything to sit on and the best he managed was to find a counter to lean against.

No. They’d started out on the same train of thought but she was switched tracks and he got derailed. “Not really, not after the Mark VII.” There was no recognition registering on Steve’s nodding face. “The one we used in New York,” Tony said. “After that—she, built the diamond. I built thirty-five suits in the same time.”

There was recognition for that, a quiet dampening to Steve’s smile, a slight shift in his miraculously sculpted shoulders. This was a man who had watched his own Tony Stark fall apart enough to know all the signs of the sort of breakdown that drove a man to relentlessly try to out build his nightmares. (Tony hadn’t, in the end, managed to vanquish the nightmares. They’d caught up to him in the end.) “No, she’s never done anything like that,” Steve agreed. “I guess she’s never seen the need.” But also, “thirty five? In six? Seven? Months?”

“I was trying to be prepared.”

Steve had feelings about that statement, but he regarded his coffee instead. He thought it through, shifting around the shape of words behind his face until he took a little sip and looked up at him again. By then, the only emotion left on his face was resolve, “you know. She built a sparring suit. It’s lightweight, no weapons. We use it to spar.”

“I got that from the name. I thought you didn’t want me using her tech.”

“I’m not always right,” Steve said. He straightened so he was standing fully upright. “I could use a decent sparring partner, if you were interested. I’ve been,” he lifted his fist, looked at his pinked knuckles, “using punching bags but they don’t really hit back.” He shrugged that off, “a good work out helps me feel better.”

Sure, it did. Steve looked like the sort of man who believed in the power of sweat like gospel. Tony didn’t mind a work out, he didn’t mind a run, he didn’t mind hard work, he just preferred it in the course of creating other things. “Yeah,” he was saying like he really meant it, “sure. I’ll look up the specs, make sure I can fit in the suit.”

Steve snorted. “You’ll fit.” But he didn’t bother to explain his reasoning about that before he turned around to leave. “I’m going to take a shower, let me know when you’re ready.”

# A SIDE

Bucky could have had anyone; Bucky had had anyone he wanted. They came to him eagerly whenever he offered them a second glance. Hell, Bucky had _had_ him, even if it were only for a moment. (An ill-advised moment, a never-spoken-of moment.) There had never been any point in denying it; trying to would have driven a sane man to the brink of madness. 

Or this would, sitting with his teeth clenched, frowning at the mirror doing nothing but reflecting his face. Working over the words of a woman who had done nothing but treat him as an obstacle and an enemy since the moment she’d arrived in this world. (What had she said when they met that first time? About how she had seen something she didn’t like, about how he wasn’t a leader? How he had stood by, how he had let them blame Tony.) 

No, no, no. It wasn’t the words. The words were stupid, juvenile words. So, what if Bucky could have had anyone he wanted? Steve could have anyone he wanted; he’d heard that often enough it must have been true. (The fact that Steve had not yet found anyone he wanted was another matter entirely. For him, at very least, not for Her Husband, who had found something in her face and her cruel heart that was worth swearing his loyalty before God.) What did it matter what Steve had done in an alley, or with who?

How could both facts insult him? That he had gotten on his knees for Bucky and that Bucky could have had him and never wanted to? (It wasn’t that simple; Bucky wasn’t that simple. He was more than an insult and a tool of a mean-spirited woman.)

No. Steve hadn’t thought about those stupid pictures since he was brand-new to the skin-tight costume, selling war bonds to starry eyed housewives. He hadn’t worried about it the first time he’d run into a real battle. That was years-and-years ago now, decades if anyone cared to count the time he’d been asleep in the ice. Those pictures should have been destroyed but they had been digitized (apparently) and now they were available for free consumption. It made him uncomfortable, it brought him back to a sterile room and a man with a camera and a cigarette in his mouth, saying nothing about anything but ‘lift here, bend there’. 

It wasn’t the _words_.

“Do you not like it?” 

“What?” Steve hadn’t realized his fingers were gripping the arm rests hard enough to warp the metal until he was startled out of the fog of thought. His hands released, and his jaw unclenched. The world came back into focus, the woman who had been clipping his hair was holding her scissors out to the one side as she looked at him with uneasy concern. All this time he’d been staring at his own face without seeing anything. There he was, Captain Steve Rogers, God’s Righteous Man, staring right back at him. “It’s what they want,” he said. 

“Oh,” Anna, (if the nametag was right) said. “They gave me some of the old photographs. Just let me get you cleaned up a bit and you’ll be all set.” She set the scissors down on the counter before she slid back behind him. “So, you’re doing a charity benefit?”

“Yeah.” Maybe he wasn’t, but the man in the mirror was going to slip into that stupid skintight uniform and say his lines. Because Captain America had been born on a USO press tour, asking anyone with a few dollars to spare to spend them on the war. (Every bond you buy is a bullet in your best guy’s gun.) Because even after he was dead, they were slapping Captain America’s face on everything from lunchboxes to trading cards, carrying on the myth of the man he really was.

(And Steve had enjoyed the power that had given him, at the time. He’d been flattered by it.)

Steve was just Steve, a man that was doing his best to be helpful in this stupid, modern world. He was just _trying_ , but not _trying_ to be the hero that wore his face with an exaggerated smile and a few key sentences to say. Steve-was-Steve wouldn’t have shown up to play a part in a charity benefit. Steve-was-Steve didn’t belong on trading cards; but Captain America was a Hero and Captain America Cared.

(Steve was Steve, a boy so blinded by ambition that he’d let a man with a camera photograph his naked body. Steve was Steve, a boy that craved anything at all like affection that he’d convinced himself the friendship Bucky offered him tasted like love.)

\--

# A SIDE

There had been no magic the moment she laid eyes on Steve. Her future husband was nothing but a man that her Father had put more time, love and effort into than her. She had walked into the sterile room with the long wood table and the man wearing a sweat shirt and a sheepish, overwhelmed expression, and she’d seen nothing but the living-breathing-representation of everything she’d hated about her Father.

There he was in the flesh, Captain- _Fucking_ -America, looking nothing at all like a living legend and everything like a lost young man. (Maybe that was the biggest insult of all, worse than having a Father who couldn’t bother to tell her that he loved her while he was alive. More offensive than the magazines that couldn’t bring themselves to believe she’d actually built the Iron Man armor. This was worse, this puppy dog of a full-grown man, looking around the world he’d woken up.) 

_So_ you’re _him?_ was the first thing she’d ever said to the man that would become her husband. She pulled a chair out, she invited herself to sit at his table. She watched him taking her in, the tight and genderless clothing she wore, the chaotic peaks of all her untamed curls, the sunglasses she pulled off her face. He lingered on her face, eyes narrowed and mouth in a frown. 

_You’re Howard’s daughter?_ offered her exactly the same disbelief she’d given him. Steve relaxed into his chair, left one of his hands on the table and let the other slide off. He tipped his head, he straightened his shoulders. 

They hadn’t been friends, barely co-workers, for months-and-months after. Steve hadn’t treated her like much more than annoyance until after she offered him a chance at building the Avengers independent of Fury’s oversight. Even then, when she was spitting angry at legal loopholes and bullshit bureaucracy, Steve had wrapped his whole fist around her arm and pulled her back a step when she’d been intent on following Fury into the men’s room to kick him in the dick. (It wouldn’t have ended well, but it would have made her feel better to try.) 

“ _Stop_ ,” Steve had told her. “You’re making it _worse_.” Because Steve was honey that gathered flies, with an innocent face and an honest smile. Maybe Tony had punched him in his stupid face outside of the men’s bathroom. Maybe she’d called him names that bore no repeating. Maybe she’d found a corner and a safe place to sit and _think_. To dissect the situation unfolding, to feel through the foggy sense of panic that couldn’t be cleared out no matter how hard she tried. No, that fog had snuck right into her body when she was sure she would die in that big-beautiful-vacuum of space and it hadn’t _left_. 

So it was a day, two days, three days (maybe) later after Steve had successfully disentangled himself from any remaining commitment to SHIELD that Tony had found him eating a bagel in the kitchen to say, _I shouldn’t have hit you_ and Steve had barely looked up from the newspaper he was reading to say, _no you shouldn’t have_. 

They were a few months, a half-dozen battles, and a heaping ton of sexual tension away from the moment when Steve looked at her like they were equals, before he said _you need to_ try _harder to be nicer._ But that was the first moment, his sideways glance, the way his lips lifted at the edge with a secret smile, that he’d looked at her like anything but Howard’s Daughter and she’d seen him for anything but Captain America. She was Tony, he was Steve.

But she hadn’t tried, this time, to be nice at all. Maybe the people of this universe deserved the worst of her or maybe they didn’t, but despite the proximity, they weren’t the ones that she was worried about. Their shock, and this Steve’s betrayed face were not the things that kept her from sleeping. 

No, no, no, it wasn’t anything _here_ that dragged her out of the false safety of the four walls of her barren room. It was her husband, not yet aware that she’d abused his trust, that dragged her from the bedroom to the garage.

Natasha was there with her hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing jeans and a dark shirt, grease on her fingers working on a partially dissembled motorcycle. She glanced up when she heard Tony getting close, but she’d been aware for longer. “He’s too possessive of his things,” she said, “our Tony, he doesn’t like finding out we’ve been working on our vehicles. He does this thing,” she lifted her hands with an exaggerated shake of her fingers, “it’s not personal. I did all my own mechanic work before him. The last thing you need in the middle of a mission is to get stuck in a car that won’t start. You try telling him that.”

“Its not personal,” Tony said.

Natasha smiled to herself, balanced the bits she was holding on the towel thrown over the seat and stood up. “No,” she agreed, “it’s not personal. He wants us to be safe, he’s the best at what he does, there’s no denying that. But, _sometimes_ , it’s just annoying. He doesn’t trust us, that’s not because of us, it’s because he can’t.”

No. The Tony of this world couldn’t trust anyone, he could barely trust himself. But, at very least, if he built it and it fucked up, there was nobody else to blame but himself. It was a nice trap to build; a convenient way to be sure nobody else ever had to take responsibility for anything. 

“Why are you here?” Natasha asked. “Steve’s not here.”

No. Steve wouldn’t show up until he’d finished working off his hurt feelings (if he was anything at all like her husband). “I was looking for you,” Tony said. “I think it would be easier to work this out without the audience.”

Natasha rubbed her dirty fingers on a shop rag and thought that through. She was a _beautiful_ woman, distractingly easy to look at, even now while she was working out how she wanted to play out this confrontation, she was breathtaking. (And that was always so easy to focus on.) “You married Steve.”

“Yes.”

“And he actually wanted to marry you?”

Tony sighed.

“It’s a fair question.”

“Yes.”

Natasha thought about that, arms crossed over her chest. She took it in, took in the sight of Tony through this new lens. “What else do you know about Bucky?”

(And here she thought they were past the twenty questions stage.) “I know everything about Bucky that Steve knows. And a few things he doesn’t know. I know he was the Winter Soldier, I know he killed my parents, I know he likes plums and can eat a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies in one sitting.” 

“Did you know before you married Steve?”

Of course she had. “Yes. I knew. Yes, I helped Steve find his friend. Yes, I pay for the bastard that killed my parents to get treatment for the trauma he went through. Yes, I called in six favors and had to make a personal appearance at a Senator’s fiftieth birthday party to insure that Bucky wouldn’t be hauled in for war crimes. What exactly are you looking for, Natasha? When is this going to end?”

“You attacked my friend,” Natasha said.

“You let _him_ think he was doing to die alone. You said he wasn’t _worth_ being an Avenger but you’re here, living in his home, tinkering with his tech, asking me what my intentions are.”

“What are they?”

Tony wanted to punch her. She wanted to start a fight she had no chance of winning. (She wanted to feel better, and there was nowhere in this stupid world where she could.) “I don’t like being attacked.”

Natasha let her arms fall, let a breath out through her nose and looked sideways and down at the motorcycle she was taking apart. For a moment, there was nothing forgiving her in all of her body, and then it shifted. When she looked up, she said, “I haven’t seen a temper like yours since we lost the Hulk. I don’t want to have a problem with you. I don’t want to interfere with you going back to where you belong—but I’m not going to stand aside and let you attack my friend every time you’re upset about something. _My_ Steve is not your husband.”

(Was that all this came down to? After all the bullshit, after the prison cell and the threats and— It all came down to this?) Tony didn’t even want him; she wanted nothing to do with him. But unclenching her jaw took more effort than it should have, squeezing, “fine, deal,” out through her throat was the hardest thing she’d done since she carried a nuke into space. 

“Then we’re fine.” (Right, of course they were.) Natasha hadn’t even fully turned back to what she was doing before she said, “Stark Tower has better computers,” like she hadn’t been thinking it the whole time. “They’re better suited to the work you’ll need to be doing to get home.”

Of course, they were. The added benefit was how far away they were from Steve. “Fine,” she said. “I’m not wrong about him, Natasha. I’m glad he’s got someone to protect him, but he can be better and you’re not blind or stupid enough not to know that.”

Natasha didn’t seem to care (of course she didn’t). “I think that’s up to us to worry about. It’s up to you to get us back the man that’s supposed to be here.”

# B SIDE

“Just,” Tony said before they got started. He lifted his hand, curled his fingers inside the gauntlet like he couldn’t get used to the feeling of it without the repulsor. (That was one of the things she kept saying when she first finished the suit, that it wasn’t heavy enough.) “Don’t be disappointed when this doesn’t go how you’re expecting.” 

Steve had taken the time to put on the suit his wife had made him, the skin-tight one he wore under his clothes when they fought like this. It helped absorb the impact of the metal fists without leaving him with bruises as bright as blood on his skin. “What am I expecting?”

Tony’s face was visible without the faceplate lowered. Minus the facial hair and the years of regret, his expression was exactly the same as Steve’s wife. That look that whispered _smartass_ without having to speak at all. “I’ve never done this. I’m not asking you to take it easy, I’ve just never done this,” he circled his finger to indicate the ring and their bodies inside of it. “I mean, I’ve fought.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Good.” Tony dropped the faceplate of the suit, found a comfortable place to put his feet (the boots weren’t heavy enough either. And she couldn’t fly. Tony’s list of complaints the first time she used the suit had stretched on-and-on) before he brought his fists up. “Well, no time like now. Whose supposed to go first?”

Steve shrugged, “there isn’t a set person. You can go first.”

No. Tony wasn’t going to hit him. Not this Tony, not now. Steve lifted his fists. Still, nobody moved. Nobody shifted, nobody breathed too hard, the moment lingered and _stretched_ , growing thinner and thinner as the seconds passed. Tony wasn’t going to hit him because Tony-and-Steve weren’t equals and allies. 

Or because someone, at some point, had convinced his man that he _couldn’t_. It was an ugly look for Tony Stark. There was no telling if it was the Steve of another world, or an enemy or even just the man himself. It only mattered that Tony was standing opposite him with both fists in the air, just waiting. Waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

To be attacked. Tony expected it, he’d telegraph the expectation with the stance of his body. He’d put his effort and energy into preparing a counterattack. He was ready to defend himself. He was willing to take the hit, knowing that he had a back-up plan. But he wasn’t going to move first.

That was okay, because Steve had patience. He’d learned it when he was eleven and hardly breathing. He’d learned it on the ground with the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth. He’d learned it in alleys full of bullies. He’d learned it in recruitment center waiting rooms. He’d learned it in war.

He’d learned it here, in his wife’s house. Because Tony Stark was a thousand things, an infinite list of possibilities, but she wasn’t patient. She couldn’t be made to wait. She couldn’t stand it, she couldn’t be still. There were too many thinks to think, too many things to build, too many possibilities to prepare for. There was a future that needed someone to build it and Tony couldn’t stand still, right here, in the present.

Steve was a man out of time; seconds were nothing to him. Seconds and minutes, with his fists up, watching Tony watch him.

“Cap,” Tony said. “Not that this isn’t fun but—”

“So, hit me,” he said.

No, no, no. Tony didn’t like that. It bristled through his body, all those moving parts of the suit shifting across themselves like snake-scales. His fingers creaked in his metal fists, his arms quivered but didn’t fall. No, no, no. 

The first time they’d stood here, him and his future wife, she had built a suit just to fight him and he had let her hit him because he couldn’t hit her back. Not even with the suit, not even knowing that she was safe (and she was, she’d built a dozen suits by then. She’d taken hits that he couldn’t have survived, she was as safe as she could be). He couldn’t hit her, and she couldn’t tolerate his reserve. (You’re not fighting back because I’m a woman.) Anger was his wife’s biggest asset and her greatest weakness. 

(Steve and Natasha liked to say, among themselves, that if it came down to it: Tony versus The Hulk, there was no telling who would win just as long as they were both angry.)

Tony did move to hit him, but there was no force or feeling behind it. Steve blocked the hit, pushed Tony backward with minimal effort. He watched the suit stutter, heard the way it echoed as it hit the floor of the ring. (She hated being pushed too. She _hated_ it.) This Tony hated it too, brought his arms up with more intent. The suit had no facial expressions, so there was no telling what the person inside of it was thinking—not unless you memorized the body language, not unless you had enough time to take note of the minute changes in posture. “You’re infuriating,” Tony said.

“It comes naturally.”

Tony didn’t laugh. He tried again, and Steve blocked him, shoved him back. 

And again.

And one more time, harder this time than the one before, hard enough that when he shoved Tony back he stumbled into the ropes. So that it shook through him, knocked him off balance. There were no repulsors to catch the fall, nothing to use to right himself except his own limbs. That realization played out in a fumble of limbs, Tony’s hands flattening out like he there was something that could catch him. But there wasn’t.

Oh, and that realization was pure animal instinct. The realization that the suit was only a thin layer of metal, a bit of moving parts, with no weapons and no great advantages. It was a second skin to absorb the impact when Steve hit back. That was fear, like a half-uttered gasp, just for a second and then Tony was back on his feet. “I’m sorry, is this fun for you?”

“Sometimes.”

When Tony moved again, it was with precision, with purpose. He had learned more from getting blocked than he would have from landing a hit. (And with JARVIS in the head’s up display, he had nothing but information on how to win.) Tony didn’t move like Steve’s wife. His strength was distributed differently, his attack style didn’t match up. It was almost a surprise to get punched in the face (and Steve had seen it coming). Almost a surprise to feet the heat bloom there and to see how Tony recoiled in shock of his own. 

“Better,” Steve said. And he hit him back. Shocked as he was, unprepared to defend himself, Tony did nothing to stop the blow. It knocked him back again, and Steve followed. There was an advantage to exploit in that hesitancy, more than enough time to bring an end to a short fight. If men in battles fought like this one fight in the ring, Steve could have killed them all. (As it stood, he’d killed enough of them. More than, even.) He handed a solid punch to Tony’s side, managed a semi-good blow to his face before the suit bristled up with annoyance again.

Fear had its uses; so did anger. 

Anger is what made Tony grab Steve by the face just seconds before he slammed their heads together. Anger is what shoved Steve backward while there were still stars floating in his vision. Anger grabbed him by the shirt, anger punched him in the face, anger threw him to the floor of the ring. 

It was a real fight, kicking-and-punching and snarling. It was a fight that mattered. 

A brief fight, brought to a standstill when the suit fell away from Tony’s sweat-damp body. There he was with human hands balled into furious fists, chasing Steve down to the ground as he fell. Tony was only a man (with a red face) with one hand on Steve’s chest to hold him still and the other curled up to hit him until he couldn’t lift his arm anymore. 

It was one-two-maybe three punches. It was Tony’s sweat-streaked face and his clenched white teeth. It was the ineffective strike of his fist on Steve’s face, the way he used his weight to pin Steve down.

Or it wasn’t. 

Maybe it was Steve getting his elbow under him. It was Steve lifting his body up, lifting his arms to drag Tony closer. It was an awkward moment of fighting elbows and Tony’s knees and feet against the ground trying to get free. It was Tony’s voice like a howl, saying, “get off me, let go—I don’t, I do—” But Steve was a science experiment, with strength like a bear. He curled his fingers into Tony’s shirt, he pulled him down, he pulled him _close_. “I don’t need you,” Tony said. “I don’t,” he repeated. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve answered. 

Tony went still with his forehead pressed against Steve’s shoulder and both his hands pushing at Steve’s chest. “I’m not worth it, Cap,” Tony whispered so low there was no telling if he even wanted to be heard. “I’m not her. You don’t know the things I’ve done.” 

No, Steve didn’t know. He didn’t need to know. He loosened his grip, just a bit, just enough that Tony could get free if that was what he wanted, but the man didn’t move. He stayed right there, hiding his face against Steve’s body, holding them half an arm’s reach away from one another.

# A SIDE

Steve met Natasha at the bar (and grille). It hadn’t sounded like a request when she sent him the text and he had no reason to hurry back to the compound. (Not when it was Hill with fresh sheets of lines for him to memorize and Tony lurking somewhere in the rooms.) He would have to go back eventually but not immediately. He found Natasha at a table in the corner, watching the early crowd milling around without clear intention. 

“You know I can’t get drunk,” he said.

Natasha was already sitting something out of a cool glass, giving him a dirty look for a stupid opening line. “Yes, Steve. I do know that.” She waited for him to sit before she nodded at his brand new haircut, “it’s a little early for Halloween, isn’t it?”

“But I’ve already got my costume all picked out,” he said. He picked up the little paper menu stuck between the salt and pepper, concentrating on the list of offerings rather than the way he was being watched. Natasha reached across the space to run her fingers up the back of his neck into the short hair there and then she sighed. “I’ve had worse haircuts,” he said. There was no sign of a waitress and no hope of Natasha announcing her intention any time soon. “Is there a reason we’re here?”

“I thought it would be nice to catch up.”

Right. Of course, she thought that would be good. It was a great time to get caught up with one another. So, what have you been up to? Oh, having my personal secrets spit at me by a woman I married in another universe. (Steve hoped that, given the chance, things would have worked out with Peggy because he was oh-for-two with his potential lovers. Between Bucky and Antonietta Stark, Steve sure knew how to pick them.)

“Mrs. Rogers is going back to the tower,” Natasha said. “Did go back.”

“Was that your idea?”

Natasha shrugged. She smiled at the waiter one table over from theirs and just like that, the man was at their table asking if he could get them anything. Natasha ordered him a club soda (because what was the point in drinking anything else) and a fresh drink. When the man was gone, and it was only them and the salt-and-pepper she said, “I wanted to know if she could be trusted. I know everything about her that I need to know, and we’re all better off if she’s working on the problem.”

(That was, if she was going to work on the problem.) “You didn’t think that when I said it.”

“You didn’t know all the facts when you said it,” Natasha said. “You think because your arm heals in a few hours that it doesn’t matter that it was broken in the first place. The damage was still done, Steve. It was still done _on purpose_. It was still meant to hurt you—but you think it doesn’t matter and she knows it doesn’t. There’s more on the line than whether or not you enjoy violent foreplay.”

“Natasha.”

“We have to talk about it.”

They didn’t have to talk about it. Not ever. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“The thing I can’t figure out is,” Natasha turned her glass while she spoke, “whether or not you have a thing for our Tony. I mean, I’ve always chalked the antagonism up to a pissing contest. Tony is an aggravating man. But now that I know you married her, was I wrong before? Is the aggression not a symptom of fragile male egos? Do you secr—”

“No,” Steve said.

“He’s attractive. Not my type, but he has to be somebody’s. Why not yours?”

“Is this fun for you?” Steve demanded. “Are you enjoying this? It’s bad enough that I had to sit there— I have no interest in talking about this with you, or anyone else, so if this is all you wanted, we can leave.”

“Relax,” Natasha said. She smiled at the waiter when he came over with the drinks. He left her with a refill and a scrap of paper with his number on it that she smiled at. There was nothing sincere in her smile, hardly more than a reflex of her face. “You like her,” Natasha said to the scrap of paper.

“Don’t be stupid.”

Natasha snorted. “She’s a beautiful woman. She looks at you like nobody else does.”

“She almost killed me.” It was a solid, convincing reason to deny any attraction. It should have worked, it shouldn’t have made Natasha look at him with pity. “My only concern is making sure she’s working on getting the Tony that belongs here back. The sooner she does that, the sooner we can all get back to paying attention to what’s actually important.”

The pity didn’t lessen, it didn’t give, Natasha had the face of a woman who knew she’d already lost. (Not that defeat had ever truly defeated Natasha.) “You’re not a match for that woman, Steve. She’ll eat you alive and you’ll be happy to let her.”

“Well you sent her back. So, I don’t have to worry about her, do I?” He sipped the soda and wished (not for the first time) that Erskine’s formula hadn’t been quite such a success. Maybe it could have been slightly less efficient, slightly less powerful, just enough to let him take advantage of the numbing effects of alcohol that everyone else seemed so keen on. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Fine,” Natasha said. “We heard from Wanda. Vision and she have finished clearing the road, they are organizing an evacuation of the city. Only half the road can be driven on, so it’s a slow process, but she’s hoping that we—and by we, I mean Tony—could assist her in gathering supplies to fix the remainder of the road.”

“Fine, ask Pepper.”

# B SIDE

There was no end to the things Tony missed about the Malibu house. Some of them were intangible things, the way someone might miss a fond memory from their childhood. (The light through the windows making halos on the bedroom floor. The sound of the house as a living thing, the presence of JARVIS in every room like a warm reminder that he was only as alone as he wanted to be.) How people missed the glory of excelling early in life, the praise and adulation that came from being exceptional that could never be duplicated later in life. (The experts had told him it was impossible, advised him to give it up. The man who knew more about rocks than Tony knew about math had looked him in the face and told him the technology to build on this cliff didn’t exist yet. That was easy-enough to fix, Tony had just built it.) Some of them were selfish, the old longing for ownership of a modern marvel. He had liked having something that everyone wanted if only by virtue of it being truly unique.

And some of the reasons were the glint of the sunshine off the water. The calming sound of the waves. He missed the ambiance; he missed how he had never truly taken advantage of it while he had it. Luxury had been wasted on him, before he had any reason to think he’d ever have to give it up. 

Most of the time it wasn’t that bad; he’d picked himself up, he’d moved on. He’d found ambiance and uniqueness in other places. He’d created places and things that couldn’t be duplicated, and he’d watched his name make the rounds, being uttered with the reverence one reserved for a god.

Tony had met a god. (Or two, if one truly wanted to count Loki as a god.)

Right now, Tony didn’t miss anything. He didn’t miss his Malibu house while he was sitting in hers. He didn’t miss his Pepper because hers was putting out platters of hamburger fixings. With her hair up in a ponytail and her hands on her hips, she was just as beautiful as the woman he knew, just as flustered when she knew she’d forgotten something but couldn’t figure out what. 

He didn’t miss JARVIS, playing calm classic rock over the speakers, offering observations when asked. 

No. Just then, with the smell of hamburgers growing in the air like the hungry growl in his gut, everything was perfectly good in Tony’s world. (Not his world. It wasn’t his world.) He had sweet tea, he had sunshine, he had noise to sink into and for that moment:

He had peace.

He had Steve fucking Rogers, stopping by his chair, blocking the sun with his stupid, perfect body, looking at him with almost-a-smile, to ask: “I was just assuming how you wanted your burger.”

Love was breath-taking in the little ways. How Steve remembered she liked mangoes (even if it had been a stupid suggestion), how he knew what she liked on her hamburger, how he knew the music that calmed her down. How he knew when to be quiet and when to speak. How he knew when to be close (in that stupid sparring ring) and when to give space (right here, right now, in front of the witnesses). 

Tony’s head was an overstocked warehouse, always losing important facts around corners, leaving him searching for why he almost knew something. Strawberries, strawberries, strawberries. There was something about Pepper and _strawberries_ and he knew it, but he couldn’t always remember it. 

But this, this was simple, understated, uncomplicated love. Steve said, “is that okay?”

“Perfect,” Tony assured him.

Happy gave up his attempts to invite himself to do some grilling and settled into the chair next to him. He brought a tall glass full of cold lemonade and plucked a slice of cheese off the fruit-and-cheese plate. “You’re quiet,” Happy said.

Tony had used all the noise he had for the day. He’d exhausted it, and himself, back in that stupid training ring. With the suit as loud as a marching band, the rhythmic strikes of his fists against Steve’s unyielding body a great, screaming scramble of brass, percussion and woodwinds. It had escaped him, on his knees in Steve’s lap. He’d left it like damp streaks drying onto his face. “I’m listening,” he said. “Sometimes, you have to listen.”

Sometimes you had to cry like an idiot in some other woman’s husband’s lap. The world was funny that way. 

Happy nodded. “I’ll listen with you.” Because Happy’s love and loyalty was as uncomplicated and simple as Steve’s. Happy was absolute, unwavering. He didn’t have to understand what they were listening for, or why they were listening at all.

No, Happy was just sit with him. Just listen to the waves, and the classic rock, and Steve by the grill encouraging the hamburgers to grill just right.

# A SIDE

At least, she could take a fucking shower. That was the thought she’d brought with her the distance from the compound to the tower. Travelling by cab (if you could believe it) she had rested her head against the window and she’d thought,

At least she could take a shower. (And she shouldn’t have said the things she had. She shouldn’t have let her anger take over. She shouldn’t have attacked Steve _again_. But she had.) At least she could take a fucking shower. (Now she was dismissed. She’d struck a truce with Natasha who had every reason not to trust her and no reason to offer anything but an ongoing fight. Natasha might have killed any other person that had attacked Steve the same way. Around a corner, after dark, with no witnesses, it would have been as simple as a knife through the neck. Death as cold and anonymous as it had ever been. The newspapers would have run a blip, another senseless death, another Jane Doe.)

At least she could take a fucking shower.

(What mattered was getting home. Getting tangled up here wasn’t getting home. Getting caught up in whether-or-not she’d hurt Steve wasn’t getting home. Hurting Steve didn’t help anything; but she had. She had hurt him worse than she had intended. He’d deserved it in that room, laughing in disbelief, his first, his only, his loudest thought a kneejerk of denial and disgust. As if between them, she was the inherently unlovable one.)

But she could take a shower.

Here, at the top of the world, with FRIDAY saying, “welcome back, Boss” as if she’d only been gone on a fun trip, Tony could finally take a shower. She could trust the walls to hold. She could believe the windows, and doors, and mirrors were all what they appeared. She controlled the security, she controlled the cameras, she controlled the access.

“Friday,” Tony said. “Lock it down, I don’t want anyone—don’t let anyone up.” 

“Are you alright, sir?” 

“Yeah,” Tony said. She meant it too, standing with her forehead pressed against the glass, peering down the long side of the building, she meant it exactly how she said it. She was just _fine_. “I’m going to take a shower.”

It didn’t matter how hurt Steve was. It didn’t matter how empty his bed had been before dawn. It didn’t matter at all. Tony didn’t have any claim to him here; she didn’t even like him. (It wasn’t _him_ nagging at her conscious, it was her _husband_. It was her Steve’s face caught in that awful shock, staring at her as his every secret was repeated. Betrayal was betrayal, no matter how far away it happened.)

“Sir,” could have been ten minutes, or twenty minutes, or three hours later. “Ms. Potts is approaching.”

“I told you not to let anyone in,” Tony whispered. She had made it as far as the bathroom, into the tub. She hadn’t made it out of her clothes, she hadn’t made it to the water taps. Just far enough to hold her legs to her chest, far enough to rest her face on her knees. Far enough to be small, and quiet, and still. 

(To think, think, think.)

“I’m afraid Ms. Potts has access to—”

The bathroom, apparently. There was Pepper pushing open the door without knocking, rushing through it on her tip-toes with no heels to speak of. Pepper’s voice was as anxious as Tony’s heart, saying: “Tony! Are you alright? When did you get back, what happened?” Pepper’s hands slid across the back of her shoulders, down the bare part of her arm. “Tony,” she repeated. 

“Nothing,” Tony said. Nothing had happened. That was the hell of it, from beginning to end, nothing had happened. They’d balanced the scales, one attack to the next, broken arms and imprisonment. Interrogations and personal attacks. The scales were reset, and it had all been ultimately pointless. Tony had ended up exactly where she started, alone and very far from home. “I’m fine. _Pepper_ , get off.” She shoved backward with her elbow harder than she meant.

Pepper’s balanced tipped back, but she caught herself before she fell. Her face blossomed pink under foundation. Her hands folded over the edge of the tub. Her muscles tightened, her lips flattened. She cleared her throat, and she lifted herself just far enough to sit on the edge of the tub, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle, legs tucked neatly back. Her demure hands were in her lap, “then why are you here?”

“I own the building.”

“Don’t waste my time,” Pepper said. “ _Don’t_. You have put me through hell—do you know that? I didn’t know where you went, what you were doing. I didn’t know what you were going to do there—I just knew that you’d turned the suit on. The _suit_. The one you built out of his schematics. He’s gone and we’re barely holding off the inquiries. We’re barely able to keep up with our excuse of the week, and you’re in Sokovia, turning on the _suit_. Mrs. Rogers, that is simply not how we behave in this world.”

Tony loosened her grip on her legs, let them straighten out, looked up at Pepper’s perfectly furious face. “You sent Steve.”

“I did.”

Tony leaned forward, shifted her weight up and onto her knees, slid her arm across Pepper’s lap to grip the edge of the tub just behind her. It brought them together like lovers, lined up their faces with Pepper leaning down and Tony leaning up. “How’d that work out for you?”

Pepper didn’t even blink, she didn’t move, she didn’t hesitate, “I don’t know, Mrs. Rogers, how did it work out?”

Like a disaster. Like the world was falling to pieces. “Don’t call me that.” 

Pepper sighed, looked away from her face—at the open bathroom door, or the hall beyond, or the wall (who fucking knew). “What are you doing in here anyway?”

Well, that was simple, she was finally going to take a fucking shower. Pepper moved without getting an answer, pushed Tony’s arms away from her and got to her feet with a shake of her head all the way. Tony sagged back and watched her go, didn’t try to stop her, didn’t ask her to stay—

# B SIDE

The scene was the same, but the bodies were different. Steve was the same, in the same place he always sat, watching the same sort of TV he usually did after unplanned cookouts. The spread of slowly warming drinks on the table was almost identical. Tony wasn’t that far from the same, lounging with the same subconscious conservation of space that she always employed. All her limbs held close even when she was relaxing. 

Maybe it was only the distance between where Tony was lounging and where Steve was sitting. There was never much space between them, not when the mood was mellow. Not when they were both working off the exhaustion of an unexpected expression of emotion. There was more comfort in close quarters than there was in singular space. Still, this Tony was two arm lengths away from him, frowning at the screen. 

“We can watch something different.”

Tony came out of a fog like a submarine rising to the surface. It took you by surprise, all the while you’d been watching the undisturbed sea, never once imagining what was just beneath. Yet, there it was, a ship as big as life. “No,” Tony said. “I was just thinking, it’s been—two weeks, no more than two weeks since you were benched.”

“I wasn’t benched.”

Tony tipped his head back to give him a look to indicate there was no reason to start fighting over semantics. Steve had been put out to pasture like a wheezy old horse. (Better the pasture than the glue factory.) “Do you want to go back?”

Yes. Better there, where the distractions outnumbered his worries than here, where his worries outnumbered his distractions. Where good days still became miserable nights and unwelcome mornings. Where the best he could do to pass the time was to antagonize a man that didn’t deserve it. “Even if I want to, I can’t go back.”

“Is that a thing you do here?” Tony asked. His voice was calm, sleepy almost. He shifted on the couch so he was laying more on a pillow than against the cushions. The TV played on, offering advertisements for things nobody really needed. “Follow the rules?”

“I don’t follow the rules where you’re from?”

Tony snorted. “Maybe when you’re the one making them, maybe when it’s convenient for you. I don’t think they’ve made a law yet that matters to Steve Rogers.”

“Some laws aren’t right,” Steve said. “If you follow an unjust law, you’re agreeing with it. There’s enough people in the world that have no choice but to follow those laws. They can’t risk the consequences.” But he could, not because he was fearless, but because he had advantages. 

“That’s right,” Tony agreed, like a hum, “I forgot. Damn the consequences, Captain America will always do what’s right. What’s right about this?” Tony crossed his arms over his chest, tucked his chin against his chest, asked his questions to the TV more than to him. “Nobody’s running the Avengers, you’ve got no wife. You’re stuck here with me— Are you doing the right thing?”

“Someone’s watching the Avengers.”

“You should be watching the Avengers.”

(Maybe. Or he liked to think he should.) “If you can’t trust your teammates, you don’t have much of a team. If they needed me, I would go. Right now, this is more important, this is the right thing to be doing.”

Tony hummed at that, almost like a laugh. He was quiet for a while. (Almost too quiet, almost as if he had fallen asleep with no warning. But Steve couldn’t move to look, couldn’t risk leaning over only to find him watching the TV while he worked through his feelings the way his wife did.) It was ten minutes, and halfway through a commercial break before Tony said, “I understand why she loves you. You’re a good guy, Steve.”

Saying thank you seemed too crass so Steve said, “I try,” because loving Tony had not come without some amount of effort. (Well, parts of it had been effortless, and other parts were a constant compromise in motion.) Like now, when Steve wanted to tell Tony that it was safe to rest now, safe to sleep, that Steve would keep watch. But it wasn’t that easy, they weren’t close enough for that. 

Rest required safety, safety required trust, trust required faith in the people around you. Tony had known him for a matter of minutes in comparison to the lifetime Tony had already lived. 

No, Steve didn’t say a word (because it would be selfish, to say anything, just because he wanted to say it, because he wanted to be closer to his wife), he watched the show as the minutes dragged by. He heard none of it, saw none of it. He just waited, still and silent, to see if Tony fell asleep or if he didn’t. (And that would be okay, either way.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you are interested in sharing this story on tumblr, the chapter link is here: [At Bewareofchris (that's me)](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com/post/173972008202/a-sideb-side-2140). Thank you!


	22. Chapter 22

# A SIDE

Loki had been the first to call him a man out of time (to his face. The media had been coining that phrase since the news broke that he’d been successfully defrosted) and Steve couldn’t deny that there had been a time or two or six or six hundred that he had felt simply _overwhelmed_ with the differences. There were more lights, noises, distractions and _people_ now than there had been in the entirety of his (brief, former) life. But people were people, they didn’t appear to change much. A man could have let himself be drowned by disorientation, tossed around by waves until the sea of confusion took him down. 

Steve had found a way to steady himself. He’d built a lighthouse out of familiar routines and familiar faces. (Like _war_ , as eternal as time itself, there was always going to be _war_. The men at the newspaper offices liked the sound of things like _the war to end all wars_ but they settled for World War _2_ when it became obvious that people were always going to be people were always going to have wars.) Steve had found the shore in this strange place. He hadn’t drowned, he hadn’t been dragged out to sea. 

But here he was, a man on the edge of a cliff, standing halfway onto a stage while Hill and a skinny man with a tablet in one hand argued about last-minute-script-changes. (Use the teleprompter, the skinny man said. Hill’s response was as quiet as a whisper, too low to be heard.)

It didn’t matter what they settled on. Steve was as much a prop as the motorcycle they’d parked in the corner. He might have set a watch by how long it would take someone to ask him to lift it. He wasn’t even a cast member, not even one of the dancers. No, the girls half dressed up in costumes were on the stage in little clumps, arms crossed and water bottles dangling from their fingers, eying him with interest or suspicion.

_Is that really him_ made the rounds, until he’d heard it in stereo.

That was the thing about Steve Rogers, he never quite lived up to the hype. Captain America was six-foot-forever, and as big as a house. Steve Rogers was a guy in jeans and a jacket, wishing he had a pencil and a piece of paper or just the pretense of being useful. 

(Every bond you buy is a bullet in barrel of your best guy’s gun.)

“Alright Steve,” Hill said when she was finished making sure she got exactly her way. “I’ll leave you to it.” 

The director was thin as a pole, like looking in a carnival mirror. He was a fan or wasn’t or had no opinion other than the difficulty in working with amateurs. “Alright,” he said, “we’ll just go over the basic blocking and, actually,” he wasn’t wearing glasses, but his hand twitched as if he were used to a pair sliding down his nose nonetheless. “You _can_ lift a motorcycle right? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s a big part of the finale.”

“Yes,” Steve said.

“For how long?”

(Here he was, reminding himself that he was doing this for Sokovia, he was doing this for the crater that they’d left where a city once was. He was doing this because people were suffering and the Avengers (and Captain America) had to be more than a bully that showed up to ruin people’s lives. Here he was, like a god damn fucking show pony, being trotted out for display. Here he was, because Tony fucking Stark couldn’t fucking trust anyone but himself.)

“I’ve never timed myself,” Steve said. “How long do you need me to hold it?”

The director was narrow-eyes and staring at him, trying to work out if he was going to trust what he was being told. Or maybe he was developing a six-layered fantasy about Steve with no shirt on. Or maybe he was wishing he’d gotten Black Widow because that woman had some moves. (Or maybe he wanted Tony Stark, who probably did know how long he could hold a motorcycle up. Who probably could tell you by make and model how long and how high he could lift it.) “We’ll get to that later. So, you’re the blue tape,” the director said, “and you’re going to start back here.”

# B SIDE

The bathwater had gone tepid in his nightmare. His wife’s body was limp and lifeless against his chest. Her head was sagging toward her chest, one of her arms was hanging over the edge of the tub. The room had gone dark, and quiet, and—

Steve had relaxed into it. He was at ease, resting his elbows on the edge of the tub, one of his knees pulled up and his head hanging back. He could hear the water lick-lapping against the porcelain and it didn’t bother him. The smell of the settling corpse didn’t bother him. 

No. This was _peace_ , it was _quiet_. 

(It must have been acceptance, it must have been surrender.) It should have enraged him, it should have destroyed him. But all he felt was a vague sense of hunger for something warm and nourishing. All he wanted was maybe a cool drink. 

The nightmare didn’t shake him awake. The bright morning light didn’t find him startled awake. No, he wasn’t shaken awake by fear or fury, but gently jostled out of sleeping by JARVIS waking up from dormancy, from the front door opening and Pepper letting herself in. Steve was blinking awake on the couch in the living room, rubbing his eye with the bend of his finger, trying to find something stable and real in the world.

He was grasping for the horror, the betrayal, the anger—

“Good mor—” Pepper stopped three feet from the edge of the room, one hand carrying her case, the other carrying the mail they must have forgotten to gather the day before. Her face was static on a screen, keeping a smile to hide whatever she really felt. “Did you sleep well?”

Steve twisted on the couch, rolled onto his side and tipped his head and found the top of Tony’s head so close Steve’s breath made his hair flutter. The man was coming awake like a long-slow-yawn, with no hurry and no worry. (Of course he was, like Steve had, found something similar enough between them to feel _safe_. And safe was intoxicating when you were lost. Safe was what you craved.) “I did, thanks,” Steve said.

He’d slept for hours, without meaning to, without ever realizing he’d fallen asleep. He’d lived through a nightmare where his wife died. He’d woken up _here_ , watching Tony arch his back as he stretched himself awake, watched a smile cross his face before he opened his face. Saw that moment, that split second, of _honest_ , _open_ happiness that would be gone as soon as awareness set in.

“Did what,” Tony mumbled. He grabbed the back of the couch to pull himself up to sitting. There he sat, sleep-mussed and still drowsy, squinting at the light, at Steve, at how there was nobody else at all in the room. “We fell asleep here?” 

“Looks like,” Steve said.

Tony shrugged, “I’ve woken up in worse places.” That made his shoulders bounce, like he meant to laugh and stopped himself. “I’m sorry, that’s awful isn’t it.” He shook his head, the way Steve’s wife did when she’d slept too long, and too deeply, whenever she was about to turn to look at him with a sour frown, trying to be angry. Her voice was always sleepy when she accused him of wasting her day. (Your fucking sleep magic, Spangles.) “You alright, Cap?”

No. Steve pushed himself upright, up and off the couch all in one move. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I just slept too long.” (No, that wasn’t it at all. Wasn’t Captain America supposed to be _honest_?) “I’m going to,” he pointed at the stairs, “shower. I’ll meet you for breakfast?”

“Sounds great.”

No, not great. It wasn’t great because great was his wife laying next to him in bed, with her fingers sneaking under his blanket while she complained about sleep lines on her arms. Great was how warm she was when she first woke up, how tangled her hair was between his fingers, how softly she kissed him. Great was how long it took them to get out of bed, the lack of urgency that came with mornings like this—how sometimes she fell back to sleep, and sometimes she invaded his shower to remind him some of her favorite effects of the superhuman serum were X-rated. 

Breakfast was only breakfast without his wife; nothing good or bad or remotely interesting about it.

# B SIDE

If Tony had had a thousand years to predict what would make Steve Rogers run, he would never have predicted _this_ moment. Then again, Tony’s visions of the future had been limited by the fabric of what he thought was reality. Universe swapping had never factored in. 

(If Tony were a better man, he would have felt worse about it. He wouldn’t have felt encouraged, watching Steve restrain himself from running up the stairs. Up and away to four walls and a door. Up to where there was space to think, and neither of them had to admit they’d slept through the night and woken up awkwardly close together.)

Tony stood up, intent on a visit to the bathroom, a fresh pair of pants and maybe a toothbrush. He’d fallen asleep the night before, sometime between the love interest showing up and the resolution of whatever late TV movie had been playing. He’d been weighing the pros and cons of seducing a married man without his consent. (The only pro that mattered, in the end, being that _not_ knowing gave Steve plausible deniability if this worked, if he got his wife back. That mattered more than Tony’s conscience.)

“You’re torturing him,” Pepper said. The front door had not opened (while Tony was awake) and JARVIS had not greeted her (while Tony was awake) but there she was anyway, standing on her stocking feet at the edge of the living room. “Does it have to be like this?”

“Do you think I’m enjoying this?” He tugged his shirt straight, rubbed at the crick in his neck. His body was lazy with lethargy, doing a slow-start up toward being reliably awake. He missed that feeling, the satisfaction (the satiation even) of sleeping just slightly too long when he’d been awake for days-and-days. Maybe it was years and years since he’d slept that well, and his body was overdue for a break. It felt good, even as heavy as his limbs were, even as fumbling as his fingers were. It felt _good_ to wake up to nothing but the light and sound of the real world. No nightmares like firecrackers exploding in his ears. It was only the coming of morning that had brought him back to consciousness. “Do you think this is something that I _want_ to do?”

Pepper walked on her toes, like her feet forgot she didn’t need to sneak. Her arms crossed over her chest when she was close. Her hair was loose and vivid in the sunlight. Her smile was petal pink and misleading with their faces so close he could make out none of her face except the shell of her ear as she tipped her head to whisper against his cheek. “You think you don’t?” was a lover’s caress. She leaned back so he could see her, exactly how he remembered the woman he loved. So, he could see what _his_ Pepper would look like if she had caught him waking up with another man. “How much of this is about you thinking it’ll work and how much of this is about you just wanting the chance?”

“What?” 

“I’m not angry,” Pepper said (directly opposite of what her body language was _screaming_ ). “Tony, I’m not angry. If you’re right, and she’s _always_ right, it’s _exhausting_ how often she’s right—this will work. I just think, you should really take the time to really think if this is a sacrifice you’re making.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony pulled his arms up, hugged his sluggish body just to hold himself in place. “What happened to _I’ll forgive you_.”

“I will.”

“Pepper,” (sounded exactly like the headache that was forming behind his eyes at this very moment), “what do you want from me? You don’t want me to do this? You do want me to do this? What do you want? What do any of you want? Because, I’ve got to tell you—this isn’t exactly my idea of a good time either.”

Pepper was standing straight up, looking at him like she wanted to slap him. She might have, if she were his and he was hers. But they were a mismatched set, so she cleared her throat instead. “I didn’t think it would _hurt_ ,” Pepper snapped at him. “I didn’t think I would care—why do I care? It’s not me that you’re cheating on, it’s not me that you’re cheating with. I’m not going to lose anything no matter what you do,” every word she spoke was blossom of pink on her face, a gradual tightening of her throat. Tears were filling up her eyes. 

It was instinct, how he reached out to touch her arms, how his hands slid up from her elbows. It was just instinct to steady her, to try to _help_. “Pep—”

“What’s taking you so long?” she asked. The words scraped out of her throat. “Why haven’t you fixed this yet?”

Oh. “It’s not you,” Tony said, “it’s _her_. You’re feeling her.” (What a feeling to have to feel. What ugly despair, what ugly betrayal. What ugly doubt.) Tony lifted his hands away by millimeters, tipped his head and smoothed his face. It wasn’t about _him_. “Can I?” 

Pepper sniffled, rubbed the tears away from her face with the tips of her fingers. She was shaking her head but the red in her cheeks wasn’t going away.

“Pepper,” Tony said, “I know her, let me help?”

“This is stupid.” But the words were just a white flag, a quiet surrender as Pepper nodded her head. Tony’s hands were back on her arms, sliding up from her elbow. He didn’t pull her, but ease their bodies closer. His hands slid across the back of her dress, his fingers bumped over the zipper down her spine as her arms slid under his arms. The last moment he saw her face was only her eyes blinking closed. He closed his eyes, let his body remember how this went, how they came together in moments like this. How he held her when she was _angry_ and _overwhelmed_ , when she’d been pushed and pushed until she couldn’t stand it. (And not always by him, not always.) 

Her voice was thick with tears, her forehead was pressed against his shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” she whispered.

Tony threaded his fingers through her hair and kissed her temple. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t mean to rush you, but, we’ve got to work through this before Cap comes back down. I don’t mind taking one for the greater good, but I get the feeling he’s the jealous kind.”

Pepper snorted.

“You can tell me if I’m off base. I’m just guessing. He has a real Me Tarzan you Jane kind of vibe about him. Am I wrong? Is there a threesome Thursday?”

Pepper lifted her head to frown at him, with humor in her face, she just shook her head. “No.”

“Swinger Saturdays?”

“No,” Pepper said again. “He probably wouldn’t like this.” Still, Pepper’s hands didn’t move off his back. The closeness of their bodies didn’t change. She looked at him, for the very first time, like he was a real person. As if he had merit, as if he were worth the effort. “But,” was a conspirator’s whisper, “he’ll be a few minutes. I think he’s going to figure out your plan.”

(Oh thank God.) “Well, worse things have happened.”

# A SIDE

Night did not produce a better morning. The bed did not produce her husband. The tower did not become Malibu. Nothing had changed at all. (What did she expect? What should she have expected? That this whole wretched world would rearrange itself on command? That she would wake up back where the world was right? Where up was up and down was down and Steve was her husband? Where Tony was a leader and a friend? No. No. _No_. Things like this did not simply resolve themselves.)

Her reflection was an old woman, worn and beaten around the edges. Her eyes were swallowed by dark circles. Her hands were claws folded around the edge of the sink. “You really fucked this one up, didn’t you Antonietta?” (That’s what she got for throwing stones. That’s what she got for presuming to _know_ things she had no way of understanding. That’s what this fucking place did to you, got under your skin, drove you fucking insane.) Her head tipped the side, her lips sliced up her face, there she was looking at the face only a mother could love. “Didn’t you Nettie?”

(It felt like it had when she was young, and stupid, and full of mistakes. After the music faded, after the liquor wore off, after she woke up from another night of dancing on tables and making out with pretty girls with no memorable names. After she’d scraped by without incident because there was a shadow of a man right behind her. God, how it had felt with a hangover pounding through her skull and Happy half-asleep on a chair by the bed. How he’d been so young then, how he said, _I’ve got you, boss. I brought you home_. Whatever hotel room constituted home at the moment. It felt like that, rumpled and dry mouthed.)

She took a shower without fanfare. Just her naked body under the fall of water interrupted only by the application of soap. Her body remembered the motions; it required no help from her.

She sat on her empty bed in nothing but her skin, back to the windows, towel hugged against her chest. She sat until the water stopped dripping out of her hair, until the air conditioning left her skin rippled with goosebumps. She sat long enough to collect herself, like tidying up a messy workplace. She picked up the mistakes she’d made and laid them into boxes inside her head.

She got dressed in brand-new clothes, exactly where she’d left them before Sokovia. She went to the kitchen for coffee, and toast, and a banana. 

She went to the lab.

“FRIDAY,” Tony said as she eased back into the work chair, “show me everything you’ve found.”

It surrounded her, all of the facts. All of the figures. All of the graphs of data. They floated over and around and behind her in shimmery blue light.

# A SIDE

A very, terribly long time ago; so long ago now that nobody alive could possibly have remembered, Steve had only been a very little boy with a wheezy cough and a dutiful Mother. She had been a hard worker, his Mother, always moving and moving and moving. Things had to be done and there was nobody else to get them done what with how Steve’s Father had died in the war. 

Steve’s Mother was a woman in constant motion. A woman that mopped the blood of his face with practicality and no sentiment. She’d given up fluttering in worry, she’d bypassed concerning herself with his inclination for picking fights he couldn’t win. She’d exhausted her warnings and she’d never bothered to offer him advice. (Not so much as a, maybe take a different route home, Steve.) She rubbed the blood away from his nose with a damp rag and her hand under his chin, making no expression at all on her face. 

“You were such a sweet baby,” Mother said to him. “You didn’t cry, you didn’t scream. Not like some children do. You weren’t born with a temper, Steve.” There may have been more to the lecture, there must have been more meaning to the words, but she had finished cleaning his face and there were other-things-to-do. (Always, always other things to do.) 

Wouldn’t she be surprised to see him now? Wouldn’t she just turn over in her grave? Wouldn’t she chase him out of the house with a broom, yelling at him about how they didn’t have the time to go off worrying about cleaning up the things he was intent on breaking.

But Steve didn’t like the man staring back at him out of the mirror. That man that looked like the stupid boy who let a man take photographs of his naked body; that awkward, stupid boy that hadn’t felt _exactly_ right about it. But sacrifices had to be _made_ , things had to _change_. That boy who took it on faith that all the wrongs in his life would be righted, that he could become the man he’d been trying to be since the day he was born. The one Erskine had seen when he looked at him.

Wouldn’t that stupid boy be just as angry to see him now as Steve was to see the boy standing in the mirror. Wouldn’t he just be so embarrassed? Oh fucking _golly gee_. What a _fucking_ sight to see. 

The mirror shattered before Steve realized he’d punched it. The woman who had brought his costume for a last-minute fitting screamed before the pain registered. The pain wasn’t that impressive, but the streak of blood that rolled down the shards of the mirror that hadn’t fallen was shocking (and satisfying). There was no stupid kid looking at him, taking stock of how they’d walked themselves into a circle seventy years in the making.

No, it was only Steve leaning away from the vanity below the mirror, regaining something like sense. The room was half-full of people who were there to make sure he looked like the posters. Each of them was off-center, reacting with various levels of fear and shock. Steve wasn’t known for thinking fast, or being clever, but he cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said, “there was a fly—I didn’t think, the mirrors at the Avengers compound are reinforced.”

He could have clocked the choices they made with a stopwatch. He could have recorded the exact second they decided to believe he was just a dumb bull in a flag costume because it was easier, simpler and more comforting to think so. Oh, that Steve Rogers, as strong as an ox and as smart as a bucket of rocks. 

“I’m sorry, do you have a towel?” He held his hand away from the costume, “I don’t want to get anything on the costume.”

He got five out of six of them to smile at him, to reassure him it was okay. They relaxed, and it was only the last one, near the back of the group that excused herself.

# B SIDE

To her credit, Natasha answered on the second ring. She was holding a burrito (he assumed) in one hand and a plate in the other, not at all bothered with how she’d answered the phone with her mouth too full to talk. (After all, it was Steve that was calling her, it wasn’t as if she could have prepared herself.)

“What the fuck did you tell him to do?” Steve demanded.

Natasha exaggerated her chewing, tipped her head to convey with her eyes that he already knew the answer to that.

And he did. He knew exactly what the answer was. Exactly why Tony had gone from keeping him just beyond arm’s reach, always checking for exits and holding him off from getting too familiar to— 

To wrapping his arms around Steve’s chest while they rode the motorcycle.

“Fuck,” Steve said. Right here, in his wife’s bedroom, right here not so far from the bed he shared with her, he was standing in front of the video monitor, watching Natasha swallow so she could start in explaining how it would be okay. Everything was okay to Natasha, everything could be made okay as long as the ends justified the means. The end of this was his wife, back here where she belonged, and the means were what?

Fucking Tony? For what? For the sake of it? 

“You know I love you, Steve,” didn’t sound that much like something Natasha would say to him no matter the circumstances, “but you had that whole house fluttering around like drunken butterflies that couldn’t figure out there is exactly one thing in this world that your wife can’t get from anyone else. You’re it, Steve. You’re the only thing that’s going to get to her.”

“Not by fucking someone else,” Steve hissed at her. “Not by—he’s dating Pepper. And you just what? Casually mentioned that this is the only way?” Tony didn’t deserve that put on him. He didn’t deserve to be pushed into that corner, to be asked to make that sacrifice.

“I told him that you were her weakness. I told him the truth, that you’d do anything to get your wife back.” There, at least, Natasha looked as if she wished it weren’t true. As if she understood half of what they were doing. “I’m assuming if you’re calling to yell at me, it must be working. I assume if you’re this angry, he didn’t explain the plan.”

_The plan_. It hadn’t felt like a plan, it hadn’t felt like anything, it had only felt (right? Wasn’t that how it felt? As if order was finally starting to be restored to the world?) “Natasha,” it wasn’t _right_. It wasn’t their place to do this, to ask this, to expect it. “It’s _Tony_. Tony would do anything to help the team, to make things right. You knew that, you took advantage of it.”

“He would have figured it out, Steve. All I did was speed that up. If he’s right, if she’s not paying attention—nothing changes.”

“This isn’t about getting her back!” Steve yelled. (But he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have raised his voice at all. The walls were good at containing sound, the doors were solid and sturdy, but he shouldn’t have raised his voice.) “You should have told _me_ ,” Steve said. “You shouldn’t have put this on him.”

Natasha didn’t shrug, but only because she was containing it. “He was looking for a way, you weren’t. I didn’t do this to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him, I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt our Tony. The other Steve sounds like a dick so I don’t mind hurting him.”

“I don’t really think he’d give a shit about this,” Steve said. He was standing with his hands on his hips, feeling like all his insides were shivering under his skin. Yelling at her might have made him feel better, for a moment. Stomping his feet would have helped. Hell, just saying they couldn’t ask Tony to do this, that they couldn’t take advantage would have meant something. To acknowledge the whole shitty situation, the stupid choices, the unknown outcome. 

It would have felt better if there was anything to _fight_ , but there wasn’t. There was only the feeling of order being restored, the relief of setting a broken bone—the pain wasn’t entirely removed but it was _better_. “Last night, I had a dream I killed my wife and I didn’t care,” Steve said. “I didn’t care at all. I’m not letting him do this alone.”

“Well,” Natasha said, “he wouldn’t have been able to no matter what.”

“You know what I mean.” Of course, she did, smiling at him like she was sorry and amused all at once. Of course, she knew exactly what he meant. “End call,” he said to JARVIS just so he didn’t have to look at her face.

# B SIDE

It was lunch time before Steve reappeared from his shower. Pepper had left to go work elsewhere, far enough away from Tony that she stood a chance of not looking at him with tears in her eyes. Lacking energy and ambition, Tony had made himself a sandwich and a plate of chips. He’d thought about sitting outside to eat them. (He’d thought about throwing himself off the cliff, about how it hadn’t ended so badly for him last time, minus the part where he woke up in Tennessee with a dead suit.)

Steve arrived looking refreshed, and hesitant, keeping his hands to himself while he tried to work out exactly what he wanted to say. Tony wasn’t an expert in Roger’s body language, but he was well-versed in awkward sexual tension and equally awkward _I’m just not that into you_ speeches. 

“Something on your mind, Cap?”

Nothing Steve wanted to bring up in mixed company, nothing he wanted to reveal in front of the half eaten cold cut sandwich and the plate of chips. “I—” No, no, that wasn’t the proper start. Steve was looking at his own hands, probably because he’d never had to wake up awkwardly next to them. He’d never had to realize exactly what sort of nefarious plot his hands had for him. 

“Just.” Tony stepped away from the counter, put his hand up to halt what was _definitely_ going to be the most awkward sentence ever spoken aloud. “I’m just guessing,” in case he was wrong, “that you’ve caught on to my plan,” Steve nodded because nodding was easy, “you’ve got to let me do this. Do not Steve Rogers this, do _not_. I know what I’m risking, I’ve thought it through. Do not come at me with your platitudes, and your stupid stubborn bullshit. This was working. You can’t tell me it wasn’t.” And Tony wasn’t going to live through watching Pepper break down right in front of him and have it be for nothing. “Unless you’re here to say that you don’t want to try this, because _you_ don’t want to, don’t say anything. I’m begging you, Steve. Look,” he motioned at his face, “ _begging_ you.”

Steve looked back down at his hands. It had to have been hell, to be asked to fight every instinct you had—and Steve was full of instincts, every one of them moral and righteous and _right_. When he looked up again, he was just a guy with a shy smile, trying his best to look brave. “It’s nice outside, we could go swimming?”

That shouldn’t have felt like relief; the unspoken agreement to play this out to it’s only logical end point. (Or maybe it should have, maybe it wasn’t about where it would end, but how it started with Steve _trusting_ him, just like that. No fights, no lectures, no moral objections.) “I didn’t know you knew how to swim.”

“Every possible version of that joke has already been said to me,” Steve said. “I didn’t _drown_ and even if I hadn’t been knocked unconscious in the crash, what exactly would you have had me swim to?”

“A shore?” 

Steve almost smiled but he shook it off. “I have extra trunks for you to use. I’ll meet you by the pool in twenty minutes?”

“Sure.” But Tony couldn’t let him walk away like that, running away how he had earlier, to convince himself that everything would be okay. “Steve,” right before he was too far away to be called back, “thank you.”

Steve didn’t turn around to look at him, just looked at the ground by his feet, saying, “no problem, Tony.”

# A SIDE

The phone did not ring. The incoming call was a pulse of light, rudely interrupting the endless stream of data that FRIDAY had compiled. (That was all it had interrupted, because no matter how long Tony looked, no matter how she stacked the facts, there was no evidence at all that anything of note had happened on May 29th. Maybe a thunderstorm over eastern Kentucky, maybe a late snow shower in Montana. Nothing at all that mattered.) The light vibrated like the trill of a phone, a picture of Happy’s unsmiling face popped up over the desk.

“Sir,” FRIDAY bothered to say, “should I answer?”

“No.” Tony didn’t need the distraction. “I’m not here.” 

The light flickered once-twice more and a little red light lit up under the picture. Maybe Happy was down in the lobby, leaving her a message. Maybe he was stuck in the elevator, waiting for the doors to open. Tony wasn’t going to go searching through security feeds to find him, didn’t want to see his face in real time. (But she did, she wanted to see his face.) Tony watched the red dot until it started blinking, until the image fluttered and disappeared so that all that remained was that little red light alerting her to a left message. 

“Should I play the message, sir?”

No. No, they shouldn’t listen, they shouldn’t waste their time. They shouldn’t let themselves be distracted. Tony was focusing now, on this mission, on getting _home_. She was looking at average temperatures and weather patterns and heat signatures in the tower. (And finding nothing, no matter how she looked.) “Why not,” Tony said, “we’re not getting anywhere anyway.”

The message started with a sigh. “Tony,” the way only Happy said her name, like an exasperated older brother, tired of the same old fight. “I know you’re there. Pepper told me that you’re there. She told me that you were still angry—” (No, she wasn’t angry anymore. She’d resolved to put that behind her. She was only focused now.) “And I guess I understand, but you know, you’re a very difficult person. Is that a trait all Tonys share? I don’t want to meet another one of you after this, I don’t think I could take it. I thought he was a pain—he is a pain. He’s put us through—I’m getting off track. _Tony_ , hiding from me won’t change what happened. He tried it, you know. He tried hiding in his lab, he did it when he thought he was going to die from palladium. He did it after New York. I’ve seen it, Tony. We’ve all seen it. Whatever you’re looking for you can’t find alone in that lab. He’s been looking, _Tony_ , he’s been looking for years and he still hasn’t found it. Look,” there was a brief interruption of noise to the side. Maybe the elevator doors opening, maybe a man walking past Happy in the lobby, “I’m sorry about Sokovia. I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what we were planning, I’m sorry that we didn’t trust you— But, you’re not my friend. My friend wouldn’t have hurt Steve unless he had no other choice. I have to protect my friend.”

Tony wasn’t expecting the tear that fell down her cheek. “Fuck,” she whispered into the nothing around her. To the tears still filling up her eyes, to the sound of Happy breathing as he tried to work out if that was all he wanted to say, if there was more, if he had time for anything else.

“But, I know that you’re still angry and I know we deserve it. Call me,” (maybe), “whenever you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. Take care of yourself.”

“Would you like to save the message, sir?”

No. Tony cleared her throat, rubbed the tears off her face as she got to her feet. The lab had gone dim all around her, the world had narrowed to a blue space. “No,” she said. “Erase it. Keep blocking all the calls. Save our progress, I’m going to make lunch.”

# A SIDE

Hill greeted him at the entrance, looking as if she’d never worked with such a shoddy amateur in the whole of her life. “You punched a mirror.” The only thing missing from the accusation was disbelief. (Maybe it wasn’t, maybe Hill definitely believed it. And for good reason since it was true.) “ _Why_ did you punch a mirror?”

“There was a fly,” Steve said. The cuts across his knuckle would be healed before they became a problem and even if they weren’t fully closed, his costume had gloves. Red gloves, exactly like the ones he’d worn the last time he did a stint as a travelling attraction. 

Hill couldn’t possibly have expressed any more disbelief without opening her mouth to scream at him. It was slowly consuming her from her face to her curled hands, a growing aggravation and disbelief. (Steve was starting to realize how he had that effect on women.) Hill had almost worked around all the things she wanted to say but wasn’t going to but she hadn’t managed to figure out what she did want to say before she was interrupted by well known footsteps. 

Natasha came down the hallway, straight at him, shaking her head as she went. When they were standing opposite one another, close enough to throw punches, Natasha said, “I’ve got this.”

“Like you’ve got everything?” Steve asked.

Hill didn’t stay to argue, she went to deal with the problem he’d created. Natasha crossed her arms over her chest, she looked at him like a mark, like a bomb in need of defusing. Natasha was quick on her feet, making a living out of being one step ahead not matter how fast the other person was moving. She was fearless, and fear _some_. But standing opposite him now, she was just _fed up_. “How big was the fly?”

There was no part of this conversation that Steve wanted to participate in. It was easier to walk away than it would have been to stay and let her dissect his motivations. (Considering how basic they were, it wouldn’t take her very long. Anger was obvious, almost too easy.) 

“She had to go, Steve,” Natasha said behind his back. “Look at what she’s already done—to you, to the team.”

“To the _team_?” Steve repeated. He was stopped in his tracks, pulled half around to look at Natasha’s unflinching back. “What exactly has the team done that is such a surprise to you, Natasha? Rhodey was always going to defend Tony. Wanda and Vision were always unknowns. You were always going to do whatever you thought you needed to do, without asking.”

Natasha did spin around the, a short and fluid motion that had them staring at one another again. “That woman almost killed you.”

“Why do you think that I don’t know that,” Steve asked. “It was my face. It was my body. I am _very_ aware of what she did.” 

Worse than Natasha’s anger, worse than repeating the same argument over-and-over, there was the moment that she gave in. Right _there_ when she surrendered, when she admitted defeat. “She’s not Bucky,” was the final thing Natasha was going to say. “She doesn’t love _you_.”

No. Tony wasn’t Bucky. Tony was just Tony, just as confusing, infuriating and flawed as the man she’d replaced. Tony was a disaster in motion, like a natural disaster consuming and rearranging everything that got caught in her path. Steve had no reason to defend her, no reason to think about her, no reason at all to be want anything to do with her. She had attacked him, and she had almost killed him, and she had spat his secrets back in his face. There was a list of reasons, fresh and still painful reasons, that he should have been happy to see her go.

And just one, one very little reason why he couldn’t let it go. The memory of her face haloed by the forest, the way her hands touched his face, how desperate her voice had sounded when she said _damn it, Steve_ because he hadn’t fought back. He’d barely defended himself and he didn’t know _why_. 

(She did. She knew _everything_ about him.)

“You know, Romanoff,” Steve said. “Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think you do.” That was the very last thing he wanted to say on the matter, the last sentence he needed to utter about Natasha’s feelings about Tony Stark.

# B SIDE

“Are you kidding me with this,” Tony asked him from the side of the pool. He was dripping water out of his hair, kicking his feet back-and-forth in the water, hands out to catch the ball that Steve had no intention of throwing back to him. 

“You got out of the water.”

“You moved to the deep end.”

The deep end was a stretch at five and a half feet but Tony didn’t seem to really care about details like that. The point was that this Tony, like Steve’s wife, didn’t like to be reminded about those three inches of height he had over (them?). “So? Your head is still above water.”

Tony laughed like Ha. Ha. Ha, dragging out each sound to accentuate the sarcasm. “Throw me the damn ball, Rogers.” No that wasn’t going to work, “throw me the ball or I win. You forfeit, if you won’t play by the rules, I win by default.”

Steve snorted at that. He let his arms fall, let the ball float on the surface of the water with one hand to hold it still. “I won’t play by the rules?” he countered, “I’m still in the pool.”

“I’m in the pool,” Tony spread his arms and kicked his feet under the water.

“Technicality.”

“A technicality that proves that I’m still in the pool, so throw the damn ball.”

No. Steve stepped back until his back was against the pool on the other side. He smiled at Tony, at his pink cheeks and his slow-tanning shoulders. He smiled right at his outraged face, and pushed the ball so it drifted lazily back and forth across the surface of the water. “I’ll throw you the ball if you get back in the pool.”

Tony had a brilliant mind; the brightest Steve had met yet. Not for the sake of his genius, for the sheer power of computation he was capable of, but because of the _imagination_. Tony could have done anything in the whole world with a brain that could adapt to any problem it faced. He didn’t move until he figured out his next move, and then he lifted himself up off the edge and dropped back into the water. He didn’t stop when his feet hit the bottom but slide completely into the water.

“Oh shit,” Steve whispered. He wrapped an arm around the ball and went toward the deeper end of the pool. Tony met him there, all hands under the water, sliding up his back to wrap around his shoulders and drag him down. The ball slipped out of his grasp and the last he saw of the surface world was how it felt up and sideways, out of the pool entirely. 

(So none of them were going to win this one, apparently.) 

Momentum dragged them down, until the whole world was nothing but water and arms around his chest. It wasn’t that bad, under the water, consumed by the cool and the muffled sound. It wasn’t that bad with Tony’s voice exploding in a bubble of laughs. His arms loosened their grip as soon as he got his legs around Steve’s waist.

Tony had dragged them under the water and he pulled them up again. They were just two bobbing corks in the deep end, being held there by Tony’s hand clasped on the edge of the pool. Steve wiped the water off his face, “cheater.”

“You could have thrown me the ball.”

No, he couldn’t have. Tony smiled just like Steve’s wife, constantly amused at his own cleverness, without restraint or self-consciousness. He smiled until it lit up his whole face, with the water lapping at his chin. He smiled until he was out of breath, until it faded to a strange drag of breath, until Steve’s hand was sliding across his cheek.

Tony closed his eyes when Steve kissed him. He only meant it to be a little thing, the quiet, brief meeting of lips. He just wanted to test it out, but Tony’s hand wrapped around Steve’s wrist. The grip was _tight_. (They shouldn’t have put this on him, they shouldn’t have asked this of him, Natasha shouldn’t have, Steve shouldn’t have—) “It’s okay,” Tony whispered. He was nodding along with the words, letting his hand slip from Steve’s wrist to his shoulder, up to scratching his nails through the short hair on the nape of Steve’s neck. 

Steve kissed him again. Not how would have kissed his wife now, but how he had kissed her when they were brand new. When they were figuring it out. When she was a temptation he couldn’t ignore. He kissed Tony the way his wife had kissed him in the elevator the night before they got married, like she’d been putting it off until she couldn’t stand it. It had been his hands under her dress, and her arms around his shoulders. 

It felt like that, with Tony’s fingers clenched in his hair, with the water moving like a current around them. Because Steve’s free hand had found the edge of the pool, because he’d pulled them into a corner, pressed Tony against the side. Because Tony’s arms were around his shoulders and he was kissing _back_. 

Until he wasn’t, until Tony’s elbows were over the edge of the pool and he was arching his back, pulling himself out of the water. His legs were under Steve’s arms and that was the only thing that stopped his retreat. For a moment, any man that wandered past might have assumed Steve’s face was at the perfect height for a blowjob. Tony’s mouth was pink, and he was breathing like he’d run for miles. “I think I’m getting a sunburn,” Tony said.

“Your shoulders are red,” Steve agreed.

Tony nodded, reached down to pick up Steve’s arm and move it. Tony was retreating out of the pool, “good game, Rogers. We’ll have to do this again—dinner? I’ll meet you in the kitchen in thirty? I should shower.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. Sure. Right. Just as soon as he finished drowning himself in the deep end of the pool.

# B SIDE

“Fuck,” Tony said as soon as he’d found a room with a locking door. “ _Fuck, fuck_ , fuck.” His reflection in the mirror was the least flattering it had been since he’d dragged his tired body home from Sokovia. It was an ugly example of a man, with pink shoulders and kiss-red lips, with hair plastered to his forehead and years of sleeplessness adding decades to his age. 

This was him, the man that was going to fuck some other woman’s husband.

_Husband_.

There was no sacrifice in the pool, no reluctance, nothing at all like second-guessing. No, just as soon as he’d gotten his legs around Steve— 

“You want to fuck Steve Rogers,” was the dumbest thing he’d said to his own reflection (lately), and the face staring back at him didn’t seem too impressed with the knowledge. No, it was like figuring out the answer when the test was over. It was a little too late to save him (and really, would it have changed much? Would it have stopped him? This unwanted bit of self-awareness?). 

No, this made things simpler. He hadn’t been worrying how to fake it in bed, when he’d been working out to get them to a bed to start with. Tony had slept with men before; he was familiar with the basics. (And Steve did seem like a man who liked to start with the basics.) Tony had been making assumptions based off the wrong data set, staring from the point where this was something he was _willing_ to do. Here he was with irrefutable evidence that it had become something _wanted_ to do. 

It could have been _her_ sneaking into his body again, it could have been. If he’d felt anything at all leeching through the universal divide. She was a cold shoulder at the moment, paying him no attention at all. Oh, hell, that was only because she didn’t know he was in the deep end getting tongued by her husband, plotting out how far they’d have to go to find a reliable dry surface. 

Tony knew from personal experience that swimming trunks were among the easiest of clothing to remove. 

Running away hadn’t been his smartest move, but it had felt necessary when the only move his body wanted to make involved rubbing his whole body against Steve’s effortlessly perfect one. Running complicated everything.

He really did want to fuck Steve Rogers. (And he could, and most likely he would be, sooner rather than later.) “Get it together,” he said to his reflection, and his reflection just regarded him as an idiot. That was just as well, Tony knew how to recover a bad situation. He’d spent years perfecting his image, fine tuning his sex appeal to achieve optimal results. 

A quick shower, the right pair of jeans? 

The only thing was, he’d underestimated Steve. Steve gave off the air of a man who had never attempted to be attractive one single day in his whole life. He was completely guileless, (almost naïve), but there he was in the kitchen with a skin-tight shirt and a pair of jeans, looking down at a pot of boiling water on the stove. 

“What’s for dinner?” Tony asked.

“Carbonara,” Steve said. “Are you—”

“I haven’t slept as well as I did last night in three years,” Tony said. (Was that what he meant to say. Not, _I definitely want to fuck_ , but _lets sleep well together_.) “We should maybe sleep in a bed tonight. Not that the couch isn’t nice. It’s a nice couch.”

Steve considered that, looking like a picture of domestic sin, “just sleep?”

“We should start with that,” Tony said. “Look,” because Steve had the look of a Steve who was about to slink off and think about the bad thing he’d done, “It was a good kiss, and I haven’t changed my mind. We have to time this right, and I can’t feel anything from her side.”

“Okay,” Steve said. He looked at his counter of ingredients, “do you like carbonara?” 

Of course he did.

# A SIDE

“Sir,” interrupted Tony’s attempt to brush her teeth in peace. “Captain Rogers is approaching.”

“So? The doors are locked.” She rinsed the toothpaste off the toothbrush without bothering to stick it into her mouth. That was the thing about FRIDAY’s silence, she had to have known there was no reason to try to lock Steven Rogers out of anywhere, but she didn’t seem to know the right way to respond to the command. (Perhaps Tony should amend the program to teach it how to laugh at the right moments.) “Just let him in, FRIDAY.”

It was after dark, late enough she had given herself permission to stop staring at numbers that made no sense. She’d made a quiet dinner, she’d eaten it at an empty kitchen table, she’d put on a T-shirt to sleep in. 

Now here she was, walking barefoot down the hallway, down and around to where the elevator opened to the private floor. To meet Steve Rogers when the doors opened, to really take sight of his face caught up in that unanswered anger. He wasn’t famous for his anger, not like she was, but he got caught up in it at times. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Tony said.

“You’re one to talk.” Steve was wearing plain clothes, his stupid khakis and his button down shirt. With his haircut like someone’s grandpa, he looked every inch the boy the newspapers had worked so hard to make his origin story. Modern men reading Wikipedia articles had no context to interpret information, no better sense than to turn the skinny boy who had never once turned down a fight in his life into a blond-haired choir boy sacrificing his life for the American Dream. Steve was a _real_ person, not a caricature of one. “You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”

“I wasn’t trying to.”

Steve didn’t pace, but he was the same erratic energy. She’d seen this before, after Steve had come home from England, after he’d sat at the bedside of the first woman he’d loved, after he’d watch her slip in-and-out of remembering him. The whole world was an unfair nightmare to Steve Rogers, one insult after another, but it didn’t get to him until it did. Until he was forced to face up to the life he’d lost. The chances he’d given up; the things he’d sacrificed. Tony had seen this before; she remembered how it played out. “Why did you— Why would you say those things? He wouldn’t have told you if he thought— Why?”

“I was angry,” she said.

“I’m angry!” Steve shouted. He didn’t step closer, he didn’t move at all. His face flushed pink when he shouted but he didn’t make a single threatening move. “I married _you_? I trusted _you_?”

(Betrayal was betrayal, no matter how far away.) Tony closed her eyes, she didn’t try to defend herself, she didn’t ask him to _not_. No, she just closed her eyes for a minute, to find somewhere calm inside, to find a good place to put her feet. “We’re different,” she said when she opened her eyes again, “where I live, we’re not this. We’re not—strangers.”

“You keep saying everything is perfect where you’re from, you’re perfect, he’s perfect—the Avengers are perfect. You have an answer for everything. Tell me how I was supposed to be his friend when he doesn’t trust me. Tell me how I was supposed to _fall in love_ with a man that looks at me like a freak. You said I stood there and let them blame him—you tell me who you’d blame! He built Ultron! He built it because he didn’t trust us, not to defend the earth. Not to protect him. Not even to understand why he needed to do it! He didn’t trust us, not any of us, he never has.”

“Have you ever given him a reason to?” Tony asked. “Of course you didn’t. Look at you,” (she wasn’t going to fight him, not like this, not when he was a raw nerve), “this isn’t you, it isn’t who you want to be. Make a fucking choice for yourself, Steve. Stop relying on circumstance and old men to tell you what to do.”

They were enemies, regarding one another in front of a still-open elevator. “You told everyone _my_ secrets because you were _angry_.” Steve spread his arms, all agitation, all _hurt_ , “tell me why I should trust you. Tell me why”

She couldn’t, because he shouldn’t. “You shouldn’t. You should have trusted him.”

“I don’t care about him,” Steve snapped. He did step forward then, close enough she had to tip her head to watch his face. That was the thing about Steve Rogers, he was fast and he was lethal, but he couldn’t hide a single intention. If he wanted to hurt her, he could have done it before she could call a suit to protect herself, but it would have shown on his face. There would have been a calm to his face, that acceptance that came just before violence, and there wasn’t. Steve was _hurt_ , he was _aching_ because she’d attacked him in all the weak spots. 

“Please go home,” Tony said.

Steve wasn’t going anywhere. Tony had gotten what she wanted after all. She’d attacked him until he couldn’t make sense of the world anymore, she’d rattled him, she’d knocked him off center. She’d reduced him the way this world had reduced its Tony Stark. (Somewhere, she thought she could hear her husband laugh, the way he did when she overexcelled. When the toaster blew up and the bread was on fire. Well, it’s toasted, he’d say with a laugh.) This man wasn’t her husband, but he smelled the same, and he felt the same when he stepped into her space. He breathed the same when he was hurt, his hands touched her the same when they cupped her face.

He didn’t kiss the same. That was fine, he was nobody’s husband here, she was still somebody’s wife. “Please go home,” she said again, right into the parting of his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you are interested in sharing this story on tumblr, the chapter link is here: [At Bewareofchris (that's me)](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com/post/174087529437/a-sideb-side-2240). Thank you!


	23. Chapter 23

# A SIDE

( _What_ the hell are you doing, Steve Rogers? What the _fuck_ are you doing right now?) Self-awareness had a way of sneaking up on him, always catching him around inconvenient corners when it was too late to change course. He had no idea what he was doing. Or he did.

He was kissing Tony Stark. Not the man, but the infuriating, violent, aggressively unlikeable woman that had done nothing in the short time since she’d entered his life but physically assault him interspersed with insults and attacks on his character. But he was kissing her, the woman that had shot his friends with tranquilizer darts. The one that had broken his arm just because she could.

Thing was, Steve just wasn’t sure why he was doing it. (Or he did know why. It felt like magnetism, it felt like inertia, it felt like falling and this was the very first time since she walked into his life that he felt almost like landing. The universe itself had fractured and—)

Tony didn’t tip her head back, she didn’t protest, she didn’t wriggle to freedom. No, Tony wouldn’t lower herself to objection and complaint. She simply stepped backward and turned away from him in one motion. “Go _home_ , Rogers,” she said again. 

What was he thinking? What was he doing kissing this woman? 

Tony didn’t shake her head, she didn’t stay to make sure she was obeyed, she just left. Back toward her room, where she must have been getting ready to sleep. (Of course she was, with how her mouth tasted like mint and she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt.) 

Steve was left standing by the elevator door, staring at the floor with his hands slowly recoiling to rest on his hips, trying to figure out how the fuck he’d come to this point. Not _once_ in the whole of his _life_ had he knowingly had a wayward thought about a Stark. (He certainly hadn’t had any lustful feelings toward Howard, the brash, cocky bastard that had effortlessly succeeded with any woman he tried to woo. With a war on, there were more important things to work on than pretty women but Howard Stark found time for them both.) What tolerance he had for Tony was born from the success of their first battle, from the sacrifice Tony had been willing to make—

That wasn’t fair. (None of this was _fair_.) Tony hadn’t wanted a friend in him. Tony hadn’t needed another friend. He hadn’t wanted more than a work colleague and a team mascot. Half the Avengers were notorious in equal measures to their fame. (Like Tony himself, being hailed as a hero in the headlines and condemned as a former war profiteer in the editorial column.) Steve was Captain America, was impervious, was a _patriot_ and a nice face to offer to the press when the Avengers needed a clean reputation.

Oh fucking _golly_ gee.

But personal differences aside, lack of trust and friendship put to the side, Steve hadn’t ever thought to himself (not once, not as far back as he could remember) I should kiss this man.

(Who had he wanted to kiss in his life, a handful of people, almost all of them dead.)

“Fuck,” he whispered to the floor, to himself, to the cameras recording him standing there like an idiot. 

All the circles in his skull couldn’t get around the one _important_ fact. That little bit of undeniable truth where he’d shown up to the tower furious, the part where kissing Tony had felt like the best idea. The part where, just for a brief second, almost too short to notice, she had leaned back into the kiss. That split second, that half breath, when everything that was wrong in all the world had been suddenly set right.

_What_ are you doing, kept cycling through, interrupting his every thought about how disliking Tony had been the only natural consequence. It cut his defenses to shreds, it nagged him as he tried to build walls out of denials about how he’d never looked at Tony with anything like lust.

But he hadn’t.

He had _not_. That thought followed him down, sliding his back down the closest wall, until his ass hit the floor, until he was sitting with his stupid hands in his stupid lap, working out how he’d gotten here.

(With a car, that’s how he’d gotten here. A car and an elevator.)

Maybe the past didn’t matter at all. The universe was broken, it had swapped one Tony for another, and Steve’s feelings about the man that wasn’t here weren’t relevant to the woman that was. (Maybe, he could believe that. He could believe he was attracted to her, to how she looked at him with an edge of violence in her smile. How smooth her legs were, how the arc reactor drew anyone’s attention straight to her breasts. How—) 

It was pure animal attraction. That’s all it was. It was nothing but lust, misplaced anger and lust, trying to find something to make himself feel better about being a performing monkey one more time. (Was it?

Was that what this was?

Was that what lust felt like, a terrible, hollow ache inside his body. The sensation of starving through his skin. Steve had been cold, and hungry, and alone before. This was just like, like a boy daydreaming of something warm to eat, of someone to share his paper thin blankets, of a life _worth_ living.

That’s what it felt like when he looked at her, like he couldn’t breathe.)

# B SIDE

(What the hell are you doing, Steve Rogers?)

Well, he was laying flat on his back in the bed he shared with his wife, working overtime to conserve the space between him and the man who wasn’t his wife, (and succeeding at it too, what with how there must have been almost two feet of space between his arm and Tony’s back), staring at the ceiling waiting for some sign that this was the right choice.

Who was he asking? JARVIS? Heaven? God didn’t seem like he’d look too kindly on the notion of a man cheating on his wife, not when the decision had become so _deliberate_. Not when he’d been given this much time to worry about it. No, infidelity like this was premeditated and nothing Steve had ever learned from the Bible or the church led him to believe God (if there were such a thing) would have given him anything other than an emphatic _don’t do it, Steve Rogers_.

JARVIS couldn’t override his bias toward Tony. For that matter, JARVIS was likely programmed with a few colorful commands for if he ever witnessed Steve cheating on his wife. 

That was, of course, if JARVIS developed the sudden ability to tell apart the man sleeping on the bed next to Steve from his wife. There were enough differences it shouldn’t have been that difficult. (Apparently, Tony needed to rework the code that allowed JARVIS to categorize things. Since he was lumping all people who might be Tony in together and not bothering to investigate further.) 

If Tony hadn’t slid out of the pool who knows what the fuck would have happened. (No, they both knew exactly what sort of _fuck_ would have happened. Probably the messy, hurried, unrefined kind of fuck. The one that happened by pool sides in broad daylight, careless of potential witnesses. That was exactly the sort of fuck that would have happened.)

For all that Steve was repeating: _they shouldn’t have put this on Tony_ , he was thinking _I wish I’d never figured it out_. That was selfish and that was why it couldn’t be on Tony. There was too much blame to hand out, there was no reason one man needed to take it all.

Steve closed his eyes with one arm behind his head and one hand on his belly, trying to imagine what his wife would say. He could almost imagine her, with her knees on either side of his hips, keeping herself busy appreciating his body while she listened to his worries. Tony had sneaky hands, always busy hands, always _moving_ hands mapping his body like she wanted to memorize the topography. Her thumbs were frequent travelers, always following the same lines from his belly button to the base of his neck. No matter how many times she arrived there, he never got tired of how her hands slid off his shoulders, how she laid against his chest to whisper what she thought to him.

Sometimes it was, _that’s a lot, Spangles_ when he was full of worries and she couldn’t help. Sometimes it was _would you like me to grab your cross, Rogers_ because blasphemy didn’t bother a woman who didn’t believe in God. Sometimes it was just the warmth of her skin and the whisper of her voice asking, _would you like me to distract you, Steve_?

Steve wanted to be distracted. He wanted his wife here, even full of fight and vengeance as she would be for the choices he’d made while she was away. (But did he want her enough, was he really willing to trade her presence back in this world for the possibility that she wouldn’t forgive him? Was he willing to bet his marriage on the chance this might work how it was supposed to?)

So, he played it out in his mind and it went like this:

‘We think this is the only way. We think this is the only thing that you’d notice.’  
And her face, caught in contemplation, head tipped and busy hands mapping their way to his throat, ‘well, that does sound like me doesn’t it? What else would I miss? What else would hurt me?’  
‘You don’t have to be difficult. You don’t have to be hard. You could just think about me, you could just miss me—the people in his world don’t even love him like I love you and he misses them.’  
She laughed at him, at the way the anger cut into his words, how his hands squeezed her thighs when he talked. ‘But I am,’ she would have said, ‘I can’t miss you. I couldn’t stand it.’ Maybe she would have kissed him then, or maybe she wouldn’t have. 

She wasn’t _here_ and there was no way to know what Tony may have done. Not even a best guess. 

The real hell of it wasn’t not knowing if it would work. The hell of it wasn’t knowing he was capable of even considering it (and he was, and of doing more than considering it under the right circumstances). The hell wasn’t knowing that Natasha was right, that it would have been easier if he didn’t know. The hell was it knowing he _wanted_ to. 

Steve did want to kiss Tony. He wanted to kiss _this_ Tony. Not as a stand in for his wife, but as a separate person, as nobody but himself. He wanted to kiss him again, wanted to see if he could make him smile like he had in the pool between the first kiss and the second, before he’d run away to deal with _sunburn_. 

That was the hell of it.

# B SIDE

Tony woke up in a dream, reclining into a nice lounge chair, watching the waves gently roll across the sand. There was a drink on the table to his left, an unread book laying on his lap. The peripheral world was static, a blinding, blank white, devoid of sound or obligation, he was merely floating in an empty place with only the sand beneath his chair and the vast, unending ocean in front of him. 

“We should have gone to Venice,” Pepper said. She came into focus at his right, dressed in a less than conservative bikini, she was no Pepper he’d ever seen on such public display, but she was _beautiful_. Her hair was always redder in his dreams, her eyes were always bluer. She was holding a drink in her hand, squinting out at the glitter of the sun across the water. “I don’t know why we didn’t.”

“I didn’t tell you I was dying,” Tony said.

Pepper hummed to herself, set the drink on the table between them. She didn’t look at him, didn’t try to touch him. She was contained in her own space, with the white nothingness breaking through the sand between them. “Is that why?”

There was no way to know now. He hadn’t made that choice. He hadn’t given her the chance to show him what she would do, what she might have said, what she might have done. He hadn’t wanted to put it on her, or he hadn’t wanted to admit it was true. (But it definitely was true, he could remember how it felt, how heavy his body had started to feel. How tired. How things were starting to _hurt_.) “I don’t know, Pepper. I wish we’d gone.”

“You would have died in Venice,” carried no weight of sorrow, of regret, or anything but fact. Pepper picked up her drink again, she took a sip of it. 

Oh, but what a way to go. Out on the sunny beaches, with the woman that he loved. Long before he got caught in a rip current he couldn’t escape. Before Fury decided the cost of working with him was worth the gain. Before Coulson died. Before Loki. Before New York. Before aliens became a fact rather than a theory. (Violent, ugly but ultimately very capable aliens.) Tony might have been content to die on the beaches of Venice, knowing nothing except the unfairness of having run out of time. 

“Fury wouldn’t have let me die,” Tony said. 

“I guess not,” Pepper agreed. But she didn’t look at him, she didn’t look away from the water. Because it was only a dream, only his mind trying to find peace. It must have been working overtime scripting words for her to say, it must be using all it’s power to render her in high definition. It hadn’t even bothered to fill in the white spaces with color—she was just floating in space next to him, drinking nothing out of a tall glass. Like the blank cover the book he hadn’t read, there was no detail to the dream. “I think you have to do this one alone, Tony.”

He woke up in Malibu. In another woman’s bed, with another woman’s husband sleeping to his right. The room was still dark and JARVIS was quiet. For that moment, regardless of the unknown world around him, Tony _was_ alone. He was alone, rolling onto his side to watch Steve sleep.

What an idea that was, what a sight. In all the time they’d known one another, the real Steve, the real him, in the _real_ world, Tony couldn’t remember a time he’d ever seen the man sleep. Under a blanket, fast asleep, Steve wasn’t anything but another man. 

Tony wanted to touch him, wanted to brush the hair away from his forehead, wanted to lean forward to kiss his temple while he slept. (That must have been her, that impulse, that lingering, unfulfilled feeling.) He tucked his hands tight against his body and he stayed still as long as he could stand it. He let that feeling build until it was vibrating under his skin like an entire orchestra of strings screaming offkey and when he thought he couldn’t take it another moment, when he would _have_ to touch, he rolled out of bed.

The bathroom was empty of temptations. It offered no insights but his own reflection in the mirror. Tony was good at math, he _excelled_ at math. He could settle the equation in his brain, the inequal sacrifice of what he might have with Pepper (if she gave him another chance, if he didn’t fuck it up again) with what Steve _had_ with his wife (if she forgave him, if this worked). It was a matter of shuffling numbers. It was a matter of finding what he could live with.

That was the key, in situations like this, when the men that kidnapped him demanded missiles he couldn’t let them have. Their lives were more bearable than the lives they’d take with his weapons. When Obadiah trapped him on the rooftop, two lives in exchange for the unknown number of people that would die if Obadiah succeeded. Tony hadn’t intended to live through that. He hadn’t intended to live through New York. But he couldn’t. He could _not_ let that bomb detonate. He couldn’t ask anyone to take the risk.

Tony planned on living through this one. He planned on making it home again. He just had to find the balance between what he could live with and what he could give up.

# A SIDE

“FRIDAY,” Tony had said when she closed the bedroom door and flipped the lock, “tell me when he’s gone.” 

“You’ve got it, boss.”

Tony had brushed her teeth like she’d intended to do before she was interrupted. She’d gotten into bed like she intended. She pulled the blankets up and she resolved that she wasn’t going to worry about how long it had been. She wasn’t going to worry about what stupid thing Steven Rogers was doing in the tower. 

That was the key, to not worry about what Steven was going to get up to unattended. To remind herself that even if she hadn’t been kind to him, that even if she hadn’t even _tried_ to be kind to him, that he was a grown man and he was responsible for his own life. Tony hadn’t asked him to come here, to come out of the elevator all but shaking with anger, to kiss her like they were anything but enemies.

No, Tony wasn’t going to worry about Steven Roger’s feelings. Not for the first hour.

Not for the second.

Not for the third, when she had one leg out from under the blanket, not when she’d folded both her arms behind her head. Not when she replayed the scene again-and- _again_. Steve had kissed him like he had no choice, as if he couldn’t fight it another moment. 

And she’d what? She’d stood there, she let him do it. She kissed him back, just a little, just enough to remember what her husband’s body felt like when it was that close to her. That’s all it was, a momentary weakness, a slip up. 

Tony didn’t care what the hell Steven Grant Rogers was doing in the Avengers tower when the hour rounded out to four, when she’d sat up in the bed and pulled all the blankets over her lap. She didn’t care to the tune of late-late night, early-early morning TV. 

But she had kissed him back. She had _wanted_ to, just to take the edge off. (I’m sorry, is what it felt like. I’m sorry I’ve done this to you.) But not to him, not exactly, to her _husband_. To this miserable man who was and wasn’t the very same man her husband was. To this Steve who had never been given the chance to be the leader of anything, never given the freedom to make his own path. This world had given Steven the pretense of choice, it had given him the illusion of freedom without ever really handing it over.

Steve wasn’t made to follow orders. For all his childhood dreams were idealized technicolor fantasies of life as a soldier, he wasn’t made for the life. He couldn’t leave a bad situation alone; he couldn’t follow an order he didn’t agree with. He couldn’t trust anyone’s judgement over his own.

By the fifth hour, she had managed to sleep for twenty minutes, half-wilted into the covers from exhaustion. She’d woken up in darkness, grasping for any source of light and awareness, and found only the sliver of light coming in under the bedroom door. “Is he still here, FRIDAY?”

“Captain Rogers is in the kitchen, sir.”

(“Have you ever broken something you couldn’t fix?” Her husband had asked her across the table from a dismantled toaster. “Have you ever broken something you wished you hadn’t?” 

“I’m going to fix this stupid toaster. I’m going to make it fulfill it’s _only_ function, to toast bread without burning it. It’s not even that difficult.” With a screwdriver clenched in her fist and a tray of tools to the left, she was more determined to finish than she was concerned with the question.

But Steve had no stake in it, not real care about what the toaster was meant to do or what it did instead. He was only sipping his coffee, still wearing his bedhead, trying to figure out how they’d ended up in the kitchen at three in the morning with a table full of dismantled toaster. “What if you can’t fix it?”

“I can.” Because she _could_. “Even if I have to rebuild it.”

Steve nodded along. “With new pieces?”

“Yes. Better pieces.”

“Is it still the same toaster then?”

Trust her husband to cough up philosophical questions about toasters when she was neck deep in a three AM freak out. Toasters were safe to dismantle, safe to destroy, safe to rebuild. Toasters didn’t ask questions, they didn’t bleed, they didn’t _die_ because they were a collection of bits and pieces. She could have taken the stupid toaster apart every single day of her life and rebuilt it every night and it wouldn’t care one way or another. Toasters were _things_. “Fuck you, Rogers,” was how she answered the question, and his quiet expectation. 

“You don’t have to be alone, Tony.” That was what he always said. There had been others that said it too, others that had meant it, others that had made the offer to take her hand and wade through the hard times together. It wasn’t that Tony was ungrateful for their offers, that she hadn’t wanted to take them up on it. It was only that Steve’s hand was easy to hold, and his grip was stronger that her resistance. Steve didn’t look at her without seeing the flaws, didn’t ignore or excuse them. Steve didn’t look at her as being worth her flaws, worth the effort it took to get along with. Steve understood she was imperfect, and he offered his hand anyway. “I’m always here.”)

Well. Not _always_.

# A SIDE

Steve had made coffee just to have something to do. He’d poured it into a cup to have something to rest against his palm. He’d sat at the table so long it had gone cold, watching the steam slowly come to a stop, watching it lose the shine from the surface. If he had a thought between the time the carafe had clinked against the mug, and the time Tony walked into the kitchen wearing sweat pants that most likely didn’t belong to her, Steve could not remember it.

It felt as if he’d reached a still point; as if the world had kept moving and he had not. 

Tony got a mug out of the cabinet, she poured the coffee in, stirred in cream and a little spoon of sugar. She searched through another cabinet until she found a little package of cookies to bring to the table with her. When she sat, it was to his direct left. She crossed her legs like she was sitting on the floor, used the sturdiness of the table to pull herself up. She’d had almost six hours to think of a comeback to the kiss he shouldn’t have attempted, but it sounded like she’d only just thought up: “Natasha’s going to be pissed.”

Steve shrugged.

“Come on, Steven. You can’t shut down.” She picked up a cookie, untwisted it so all the crème stayed on one side, she contemplated the two halves and then held out the half with the crème. “Pick yourself up.”

That was easier when he understood what he was fighting. When he understood what he was feeling. This was—this didn’t even feel like it belonged to him. It didn’t feel _real_. (Not all of it, necessarily. Some of it did. Some of it was radiating out of his gut, filling his chest up with heartburn.) Steve took the cookie and he set it on the table in front of him. “What would you have done?”

“There’s no point in comp—”

“You haven’t done anything but compare us since you got here.”

Tony snapped her half of the cookie into two pieces. She laid one on the table and she considered the other while she listened to him talk. “What would I have done about what?”

“Ultron.”

She snapped the cookie into another two halves and set them both on the table. She folded her arms across her chest and she looked at him, the way Tony looked at glowing blue screens, like she was going to solve what she was seeing no matter how long it too. “In what sense, Steve? What would I have done if I were him? What would I have done if I were you?”

“What would you have done if a member of your team built a robot capable of destroying the planet and he didn’t tell you about it because he didn’t think you’d like it. What if he did it twice?”

Tony stared at him without blinking, her jaw clenched while she thought. “I have no idea,” is what she finally said. “I can’t say that the consequences of creating Ultron aren’t— They’re terrible. But _Tony_ did not build Ultron, Steve. _Tony_ was using the glowstick of destiny to make a smarter AI. He wanted to protect the planet.”

“People died.”

“Oh wow,” she said. “ _Wow_ , you fucking hypocrite. People died? Oh my fucking _God_ Steven. People _died_. And what, people didn’t die when you blew up Hydra’s factories? People didn’t die when you crashed the Helicarrier in DC? People don’t die when you hit them? When you throw your stupid spangly frisbee at them? Tell me one mission you managed without someone dying, Steve. Name _one_.”

“This wasn’t a mission!”

“It wasn’t _Tony_!” she shouted back. “Why do you need to blame him? Why? Why is it only him? Why isn’t it Tony _and_ Bruce _and_ Wanda _and_ the mind stone? _Why_?”

Because Bruce-and-Wanda-and-the-Stone didn’t say smartass things like, _I’m not the leader_ to start off a sentence reminding Steve his position was honorary. That he wasn’t possible without Stark, that he was just another cog in greater machine. Tony had autonomy and he answered to _nobody_. There were no _consequences_ when you had the wealth and the power and the _intelligence_ that Stark had. “Because _he_ should have trusted me!” Steve shouted back. “And he didn’t. He _never_ did.”

That made her sigh at him. “I wish you would have met him sooner.” There was no describing the sadness in that sentence. There was no trying to decipher what she really meant by it; how she looked like she was going to cry. “Tony didn’t _intend_ to build Ultron. Wanda stuck her fingers in his skull, because the Mind Stone used her, to get to him, to become something else. Pretend for a moment that your Tony is Bucky, and Ultron is all the people the Winter Soldier killed. And if you can look me in the face, really look me in the face, and tell me that Tony deserves to be blamed for it, I’ll never bring it up again.”

But Bucky hadn’t had a choice. Bucky had been alone. He had been tortured. He had been _used_. (Tony wasn’t alone like that. He hadn’t been tortured the same. He was—) “Where is Bucky in your world?”

“Per his request, he is in a hidden location, in a house that functions as an isolated prison with a tracking device that will activate a nearly lethal dose of tranquilizers should he ever leave the containment zone. Assuming I can’t find him and bring him back, I can remotely activate a lethal dose. I know that,” she nodded, “and Steve doesn’t. And that’s not fair, that’s not a secret I want. It’s not a responsibility I want. But it’s what Bucky asked for. My husband’s love for Bucky isn’t rational. He’d never agree to it, not until it was too late, maybe not even then.”

“What’s too late?”

“Bucky is programmed to kill people, Steve. We don’t know how many people know how to use that programming, but neither Bucky nor I are naïve enough to pretend that they won’t try.” She picked up another cookie, “I don’t know that I could do it. I don’t think my husband could forgive me if I did. How many people am I willing to let die so I don’t have to lose him?” She twisted the cookie apart, “I don’t know. I hope I never have to find out.” She held out the side with the crème on it to him. 

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he took the cookie. 

“I shouldn’t have broken your arm.” And she smiled, almost, just enough to show she’d tried.

Steve snorted at that. He looked at the stupid cookie, trying to figure out if he’d ever mentioned to anyone that he liked them. Not the cookie part, necessarily, but the sugary middle. “Bucky wouldn’t make you do it. If he thought he was compromised, he would take care if himself.” He scrapped the crème off the cookie with a finger and stuck it in his mouth.

Tony held out her hand to take the cookie back. “I like that part,” she said. “That’s how this works, you get the gross middle stuff. I get the good cookie part.”

Steve handed it back to her and picked up the first one she’d given him as she dunked her cookie half in the coffee. “I wish I’d met him sooner too,” he said. “I didn’t like Howard, not as a friend. He was loud, and _handsome_. He was good at what he did.”

“Howard was a bastard,” Tony said. She didn’t try to elaborate, didn’t add any details. She just picked up another cookie and twisted the sides apart.

# B SIDE

“We could go to the gym,” was what Steve offered over breakfast. He’d woken up with no nightmares, not even the vague memory of one, laying in bed next to Tony Stark staring at a screen full of floating figures and charts that meant nothing to anyone else. The only bit he’d recognized was the title at the top called Kansas. (Steve had doubted at the time, and still doubted now, the charts were relevant to the fine state of Kansas.)

“Romantic,” had been Tony’s response.

It wasn’t ideal to Steve either, but if he were going to continue carrying on this almost affair, he wasn’t going to do it outside of the house. He was going to keep here, where it was starting to get a bit claustrophobic but at least it was contained. “She’s pretty hot when she’s sweating,” Steve had said.

Tony had rolled his eyes at that. “Don’t set me up for expectations I can’t meet.”

Clearly, when Tony had said that it was because he had never taken much of a lustful interest in his own body. (And why would he have to, when he was undoubtedly able to garner enough lustful interest from other people’s bodies.) Steve had intended to put the weights to use. He had some sideways, almost thoughts about taking out some aggressions on the punching bag. 

(The punching bag deserved it too, for still existing despite Steve’s many attempts to kill it. Because his wife had made it for him, and she’d made it _smart_ as if a giant bag of sand needed to be smart.) 

Yet, here he was, sitting on the bench with a towel halfway between his knee and his face, watching Tony’s arms as he finished another round of repetitions. Steve had been blessed with (what his wife liked to call) a selective libido. Almost a century ago when he was young, and recently transformed, he could have had every girl in the lineup from Betty to Violet and every one of them in between. (His wife had framed a photograph the size of a poster of those girls, and she’d stood in front of it sighing to herself. He’d assumed it was nostalgia, but she had only said, _I would have tried to fuck every single one of them. What is wrong with your eyes, Rogers?_ ) They had been beautiful. Maybe they’d even been willing, but he had looked at them and seen nothing but a woman the same as his Mother. 

Three days ago, Steve wouldn’t have looked at this Tony with anything but maybe a bit of sympathy for how awful it was to wake up in a world turned upside down. Now here he sat, sorting through how to categorize the raw, animal feeling that was creeping upward from the base of his gut. How he wanted to describe the effects of watching the sweat sheen on Tony’s biceps. Maybe he didn’t want to describe it. 

Maybe it was more what exactly he wanted to do about it. What he’d do first, if he could do anything he wanted. 

“Your mouth is open,” Tony said. He let out a breath he must have been holding as he set the weight down again. His towel was hanging over a bar, he wiped his face as he looked at Steve. “Still open,” he said.

“Do you work out a lot?”

“Define a lot,” Tony said. He found his water on a table, took his time about taking a drink of it with his back half-turned. His shirt was sticking to his skin, highlighting the kind of body you got when you spent half your time inside a metal suit. The kind of body you earned after years and years and _years_ of building anything you needed. “Your mouth,” Tony said as he let the water bottle slide out of his hand and drop onto the table, “is still open.” 

Steve straightened out of the slouch he’d fallen into. Ran his tongue across his lips in an effort to restart his ability to _speak_. He was on his way to contributing to the conversation, but Tony came over to stand right in front of him, smelling like fresh sweat and laundry soap. Oh _God_ how easy would it be to make short work of a long crisis right _now_. To wrap his hands around Tony’s hips and pull him down. 

“Between the two of us,” Tony said, “I’m not the one people usually lose the ability to speak over.” 

Steve had an answer to that statement. He could refute it with a solid argument, but he wasn’t given an opportunity. Not with the way the look on Tony’s face changed from a challenge to something softer, how his fingers pushed a bit of hair away from Steve’s face, how Tony was concentrating on exactly what Steve’s mouth was doing at that moment. 

(They were all going to hell over this, they definitely were.)

Tony moved first, ducked low enough to kiss him. It must have hit him in the gut the way it had surprised Steve the day before. The first touch of their lips was shy, uncertain, still trying to figure out if this was a thing they were going to do. But Tony’s palm cupped around his face and Steve tipped his head against it. Tony made a noise like a rumble, low and almost pained, (regretful, maybe) and that was all the resistance they could manage. 

Steve wrapped his hands around Tony’s waist in time with Tony’s hands sliding over his shoulders. It was Steve pulling and Tony’s bending knees all at once, working together to get closer together. Tony sat in his lap like it had been his plan the whole time. The kiss was wet, almost sloppy with impatience—all tongue and damp breaths. Steve’s fingers coiled up in the back of Tony’s shirt, they pulled until it ripped. (Shirts had a way of doing that, Steve always forgot. A certain tendency not to withstand the full strength of his fist.) 

Tony’s answer was his two hands pushing their way between them, his fists gripping Steve’s shirt and pulling until it tore. His lips were quirking up in a smile, interrupting the kiss that Steve was enjoying. “What are you going to do now, Tarzan?”

What now, indeed.

# B SIDE

Tony could have predicted any amount of manhandling. He anticipated being dropped on the floor or pushed against a wall. He’d expected an unforgiving, possessive kiss. The kind of thing that was fueled by selfish desire and jealousy. (Maybe he wanted it, just a little, just enough that he was almost disappointed by the lack of follow through on his own made up promise. Because possessiveness and jealousy and selfishness were all excuses that sounded like reasons ricocheting in his skull.) Tony was prepared for almost anything but how Steve Rogers slapped both of his hands-on Tony’s ass. The pain wasn’t nearly as noticeable as the shock. Not as noteworthy as the way Steve grinned at him.

Steve grinned, all schoolboy charm and pinked cheeks. He was _delighted_ with himself, with his ingenuity, with his _sass_. There were both his hands cupping Tony’s ass. There was Steve’s eyebrow rising toward his hairline, his unspoken demand to know exactly what was going to happen next.

“Did you just slap my ass?” What a stupid question to ask when his skin was still just slightly stinging. What a stupid question when there were still palms pressed to his ass. What a stupid question to ask, to hear himself ask, to see Steve nod after. “Steven Grant Rogers, I thought you were a gentleman.”

That was Tony’s mistake, because there was nothing at all approaching gentlemanly in the way Steve’s hands tightened around his ass, how his arms tensed as he picked them both up off the bench. That was all arrogance, like a peacock fluttering its fancy feathers looking for a mate to take pity on him, there was Steve picking him up just because he could. “You wouldn’t think that if you knew me better.”

Well. How about that. How about how Steve’s hands loosened, and Tony put his legs down, and they were standing as two separate people, searching for a way to get closer or farther apart. Steve’s hands were on the small of his back and Tony’s arms were still around his neck. Steve’s eyes closed just before their lips touched again. 

Oh _God_ if this was what she was missing, there was no wonder she would be willing to tear the universe apart just to get back. Tony hadn’t spent six whole minutes of his life before _this_ moment wondering what it must feel like to love Steve, but here he was, consumed by the possibility of it. Here he was, benefitting from the work and effort the other Tony had put into falling in love. Steve kissed him like he didn’t notice the difference, like Tony was his wife, like they were two fools in love.

It felt _good_. It felt _divine_. It felt _right_.

(But it wasn’t.)

And then it wasn’t. Steve’s eyes were still closed when the kiss fell apart, his hands were still resting on Tony’s waist. Their foreheads were pressed together, and the room around them was still all except the fog of their shared breath. “You don’t have to do this,” Steve said. “That’s all I wanted to say, I don’t know if anyone else has. You don’t have to do this for me, or this world, or her. Nobody would blame you if you couldn’t, or if you didn’t want to.”

Tony wanted to. He wanted to pull Steve down with him, to the fucking floor, he wanted to strip them naked and make a fantastic, sticky mess of everything. Tony wanted to tell him, it wasn’t about wanting, it was about the feeling that he would destroy something here that couldn’t be fixed. That he couldn’t bear that, not after Ultron, not after everything. Pepper was a sacrifice he didn’t want but he could live with it. “It’s about timing,” he said instead.

Steve was enough of a gentleman not to call him a liar, not directly, not outloud. Just with a look, and the slight hint of a forgiving smile. His hands fell off Tony’s sides, “we should finish, I guess.”

# A SIDE

Things were not resolved. But it would have been a mistake to think that all things had some resolution. No, no, no, for some things there simply were no resolutions, there was no making things right, there was only accepting that despite everyone’s best efforts (or because of everyone’s less than stellar efforts) things could never be expected to progress past _okay_ and sometimes they simply had to settle for _under control at the moment_.

(Things like caves in Afghanistan, things like holes in space, things like _putting her in the water_ and waking up seventy years later to a world that hadn’t turned out like you hoped.)

Things like Her. Things like Steve sitting by himself in the kitchen, looking at his own hands, trying to reorganize his thinking to make space of a few original thoughts of his own.

Her husband had said something to her once, what felt like a very-very-very long time ago. He’d been sitting across from her in a nice sit-down place, wearing a battered, dirty Captain America suit, holding a fragile glass his thick red gloves. She had stripped down to her under armor (so to speak) while the suit waited on standby for snack time to end. Steve had said, ‘you get used to believing things. God, the devil. I believed that I wanted to be a soldier. I believed that I wanted to follow my Father. Hell, maybe I believed that I wanted to die in battle, in service of my country and my fellow man. I believed it all the way down, and look where I am now. Do I still believe that? Who knows? Who knows what I’ll believe if I start thinking about it.’

The trouble wasn’t believing in things; it was thinking things were permanent. It was believing beliefs couldn’t change. Steve Rogers had been forced to rethink his thoughts, he’d been forced to make choices about what he wanted in life, about what he stood for and what he didn’t. But this Steve was stuck at the start line.

So was she, held in exactly the same place, because the problem she was working on had no resolution. Tony couldn’t get home. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how. All she saw was impartial facts and figures; each of them like a brick in a barrier, stacking up to make a wall, holding here right where she was. 

Some problems didn’t have resolutions. She might not get home. Steve might never get up from the kitchen table. 

The Other Tony would move into her house, and her bedroom, right into bed with her husband. Because her Steve was a gentleman to a fault, always doing his best to the do the right thing. He would look after the Other Tony who had the look of a bruised fruit, a little dented, losing it’s shine and its firmness. The Other Tony had gotten the good end of this stupid deal when he’d woken up in her bed, next to her _husband_. 

Tony was stuck _here_. 

_Here_ where Steve was taking up space at the kitchen table, sorting out his thoughts. _Here_ , where she was _alone_. _Here_ where the stupid boy with her husband face had kissed her like he couldn’t contain himself, and—

“I was going to go,” Steve said when she came back to the kitchen.

Good, good, “Good,” she said. 

_Here_ , where a full-grown man looked like a chastised toddler, being sent to bed with no extra cookies. Where Steve picked himself up to carry himself back to the safety of the compound (one she had never built, hadn’t needed to build) to be swallowed up by what passed for the Avengers. Natasha would take care of him. She’d make sure he stayed safe. She’d protect him from himself, and anyone else, until she couldn’t protect him anymore.

Steve pushed in his chair and cleared his throat. He straightened his back and kept his hands to himself. “Thank you for the cookies,” he said as if they had done nothing but sit down for a nice little snack. As if he hadn’t been lingering in here since last night, as if they hadn’t argued, as if she hadn’t told him how she had a (figurative) button that could kill his best friend. No, they had simply had cookies.

Hell, she should have poured him a glass a milk, God alone knew what kind of ideas Steve would get then. 

Steve made it three steps toward the exit, not a bad distance to make. It was just that he turned, and she stood still. She watched him walk out because she’d told him to go. He was going to leave her _here_ in this stupid fucking _place_ with nothing but reminders that this life she’d fallen into wasn’t _hers_. 

And she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t take it one more _fucking_ second. She stopped him with both her hands around his elbow, pulling him a step back, twisting him around to look at her with shock-and-worry. 

That was alright; there was nothing too confusing about how she pulled him down by the face, how she kissed him. His hands were confused when they closed around her arms. His body wasn’t confused but _eager_ crowding right up into her space as close as he could manage.

# A SIDE

Bucky had told him, when they were both young men, to the side of a dance, that the girl that finally got him was going to eat him alive. He’d said it with a wry smile, heedless of how much Steve had loved him, _you’re a nice guy, Steve. But I don’t think you’d like a nice girl._

Oh hell, there was nothing nice at all about the woman clawing her nails up his back. Nothing nice about how she kissed him. 

He couldn’t be sure which one of them pushed, he had no idea who had pulled, but he knew that one way or another Tony’s shirt had been ripped and Steve’s had been _removed_. His arms were wrapped around her back, pulling her in against his chest just to feel the heat-and-the hard edge of the arc reactor in the center of her chest. Her back was arched, and her head was leaning back—

He didn’t remember now how he’d ended up on the floor, just that she’d slid into his lap like a filthy daydream, that the heat of her body was all mixed up with his. The smell of her skin was soap and sweat and _fury_ , if it wasn’t too poetic to think. Her raging heartbeat was a drum beneath her fragile skin and her breath a gasp of sound when he’d finally figured out what she’d wanted from him when she’d wrapped her fist in his hair and pulled his face against her throat. 

Her hand was on his wrist, pulling his hand up against her breast, her fingers across the back of his pushing until he got the pressure right, until he figured out how to move his thumb and fingers to make a shiver run all through her body. Her voice was salted, and broken, when she said, “ _fuck_ ,” to him or herself or nobody at all. 

Then it was her mouth on his, her impatient hands pulling at the pants she’d bothered to put on before she came out to the kitchen. They were clingy, stretchy, terrible pants; it was better when they were gone. Her legs were warmer, and softer and better without them. 

“Christ,” she growled at him and his hands, and the way he kissed her. At the closeness between them, at the stupidity of ever having put on clothes. “Get your pants off, Steven.” She did move away then, stood up just far enough to kick the pants away from her feet, to strip out of her panties. 

She was done before he had managed a button, and that was okay. He kissed her with both hands on her body, searching for the places where she’d shown him to touch. Her hands were busy with his belt and his button. That was better; she excelled at multi-tasking. She was leaning into the kiss, taking a moment to grab his face and tilt it—and _God_ it got better with every slight adjustment she made. They fit better together, worked better together, felt better to—

“Steve,” she snapped at him, all pink lips and wet voice. Both her hands shoved him backward. His elbows hit the ground in time with her fists under his waistband, yanking his pants and underclothes all at once. “ _Finally_ ,” she said to herself, under her breath, with one of her impatient hands sliding down his dick (and what a feeling that was) and the other reaching forward to hook around his neck and pull him back up.

Steve was still working on catching up to the proceedings, working out how he’d envisioned this moment for himself, working on his breathing, and Tony was working on getting his dick _inside_ of her. That should have been obvious, her warm hand around his dick and her whole body lifting up like lining up, and it was still a surprise.

“ _Tony_.” (Where the hell was he supposed to put his hands _now_.) They weren’t moving, just breathing, just looking at one another. He was trying not to look like an idiot and she ran her fingers through his hair, pushed it away from his face. Her eyes were wet when she looked at him, pink around the edges. “Are you—” (Okay, is what he thought he’d ask. Is this okay.) But her fingers slid over his mouth.

“Shh,” she hissed against his cheek. His hands were on her back, looking for a hand hold as she lifted up and came down again. And again, and again and— Her fingers flinched across his mouth, she wrapped her other arm around his shoulders.

There was no space to think, or breath. His hands were just resting on her body, following the motion, trying to make some kind of sense of everything. It was getting more difficult to pay attention, to listen for the ragged sound of her breath, to try to move or react or do anything but—

Steve groaned, and Tony’s hand slid off his mouth. Her face was against his shoulder, her bowed back was coated in sweat beneath his hands. He could only just hear her voice, smaller than it had ever been, saying, “it’s alright, Steve. Come on, let go, come on—”

Oh hell, and he’d never heard an idea he liked better than that. It was her slick back and his hands sliding up to fold over her shoulders, to pull her down, to hold her in place because every stupid story he’d ever heard about sex (this kind of sex, not on your knees in an alley kind of sex) couldn’t compare to this one brilliant moment.

# B SIDE

Steve wanted to fuck Tony. 

It was just easier, and better, and more honest if they all could admit that right out loud. (Not that he did, just that he would, if anyone had bothered to ask him.) It had been a hell of a bad idea the day before when he was caught up in realizing how easy it had been to replace his wife with this Tony. It had kept him up half the night; and he had woken up with no answer to the question he kept asking.

But he did. He would have had sex with him by the pool, in the gym, in the bed he shared with his wife. (Whose idea was that? Who had given him this stupid idea? Was it him? Or Tony? Or Steve on the other side, lusting after his wife?)

The thing was, Steve hadn’t made a choice at all about whether or not he was willing to cheat on his wife. It had snuck up on him, crept up his spine and into his head, so by the time he caught up the idea was already an action. Steve had kissed this Tony and all the rest was just degrees of infidelity.

Tony was playing the piano, looking like a man that had taken a beating. His fingers were sad and sober, coaxing the keys to play a song to match the mood. Maybe he knew Steve was watching, or maybe he didn’t, but either way he didn’t look up until he’d finished his thought. There was no surprise on his face to find that he wasn’t alone, only a certain sort of resignation.

“I think we should talk about this,” Steve said. 

“That’s because you’re in a very communicative universe, Cap. You talk about everything here. We’re not like that where I’m from.” Tony regarded the piano, “my Mother taught me to play this piano. She said my Father liked music, that was funny because I don’t remember him liking anything.”

“Tony.”

“I don’t know why my Mother loved my Father,” he continued, “it’s one of those things. Those things they wrote that prayer about you know the one—give me peace, or patience or liberty?”

“The Serenity Prayer?” Steve said. “Give me the wisdom to—”

“Yes,” Tony agreed, “we don’t need to hear it, we both know the idea. The point is, Steve. The point is I do want to have sex with you.”

Only Tony Stark could make a good idea sound like a terrible prospect. Only _this_ Tony Stark could have looked so downtrodden, vulnerable and in need of a hug, while he was announcing foregone conclusions like new facts. 

“All evidence to the contrary,” Steve said. He didn’t try to move any closer, because space was important. It was a boundary and a limit. You couldn’t build a relationship without boundaries, without lines in the sand, and Tony had drawn his very clearly. “I don’t know why this happened, Tony. I don’t know how to fix it, I don’t know if there is a way to fix it. We’re all just taking it on faith that there is a reason.” 

“Shit happens, that’s a reason.”

Steve snorted. “I should have died in 1945, in the plane, like I intended to. I didn’t sacrifice myself to end up _here_. If I had known then what I was really giving up, I don’t know that I would make the same choice twice. There has to be a reason that I survived.”

“There is, it was the experiment they did on you.”

That was the practical, simple, easy answer. It was what he’d kept repeating to himself when he woke up, what he reminded himself as he broke sandbags with his fists. Congratulations Steve _fucking_ Rogers, you really did it this time. You got exactly what you wanted. “I prefer to think that I was needed here. I like to think I was found and revived because there was something I was meant to do _here_. Maybe Tony, maybe _you_ or part of it, or maybe you just make being here _bearable_ , we’ll never be able to answer it.”

“There is a point to this?”

“Not all problems have answers, Tony. Sometimes all we can do is our best.”

“And our best is fucking each other on your wife’s bed?”

No, no, that wasn’t their _best_. It was just their best _idea_ about how to fix a shitty situation. Or maybe just to make it _bearable_. (That was the key, to make it _bearable_.) “She did tell me I should have sex with more men.” Steve shrugged, “I think she’d appreciate it if I could sleep with a man that was technically the same person as her.”

Tony laughed like he didn’t want to, short and full of breath. He stood up behind the piano with his head shaking back-and-forth. Just shake-shake-shaking away the things he couldn’t settle. “Thing is,” Tony said when he was just an arm’s distance away, “wanting you is what’s going to break her. Having you isn’t going make a difference. She’s this close,” he held up his fingers, squeezed together until they were all but touching. “I can _feel_ how close she is.”

Right, of course. “What do you need from me?”

# B SIDE

At that precise moment, the only thing Tony needed from this stupid, perfect bastard was—

What? To take the blame? To make the first move? To call bullshit on the whole affair. He needed Steve to kiss him how he had in the pool, like a relationship in progress, like equals and lovers and—

No, Tony _wanted_ Steve to call him a liar right to his face, to strip him naked and expose him as fraud (and how easy would that be? Tony wouldn’t fight him, not even for a single seconds. He’d play along, he’d take what he could get he’d—). Tony wanted to be innocent (this time) and he wanted to have Steve, and he couldn’t have both. Not even inside his own head where he kept his sweaty fantasies. Where they could end all this right now, all they had to do was stop fighting. Steve could rip his shirt and Tony would drag him straight to the ground. They could fuck on the living room floor like idiots and animals, rough and without finesse.

Because this Pepper would forgive him; his Pepper wouldn’t. His Pepper deserved better than to be a footnote, deserved better than to be a secondary consideration. I’m sorry Pepper, I wasn’t going to suck Steve’s dick but the man deserved his wife, let me tell you about this romantic idiot who thought he was brought back to life just for the chance to love her. Can you believe this idiot, Pepper, can you believe it? And well, I had to get on my knees for that, I had to take one for the team, Pep. I had to let him fuck me however he wanted because the man deserved his wife.

(And Pepper deserved a man that would had thought of her first. That would have said no, and stood his ground, and wouldn’t have let the blue-eyed-idiot looking at him right-this-minute make everything else kind of fuzzy.)

No. No. Nope.

Tony _needed_ the woman on the other side to stop ignoring the ringing phone. He needed her to _notice_. He needed her to _care_. But all he got for all his trouble was blue balls and indecision. All he got was the feeling that the ship was sinking and he was helpless to find lifeboats. The water was rising and Tony couldn’t even _swim_ because he was waiting-just _waiting_ for Steve’s Lovely Wife to notice. You couldn’t swim for life because _she_ was comfortable in choppy water. You couldn’t scramble for the lifeboats because she’d built them all. No, you had to stand still and let the water rise and _rise_ :

I’m tonguing your husband and I’m sleeping in your bed, he was _screaming_ into the void. I’m waking up with no nightmares and I’m laughing at his stupid jokes. I’m _happy_ here. I’m having the time of my _fucking_ life on this vacation, I’m taking advantage of all your achievements.

Good job, Antonietta, good job on marrying this man. Just watch what I’ve got planned for him, just give me a minute, a good surface and a bottle of lube and I’ll make you wish you’d answered that stupid phone. I’ll sink my teeth into his skin and I’ll rake my nails down his back, and I’ll make him gasp _my_ fucking name, forget yours.

Good job on keeping this house. (I’m not giving it back. I’ve hid my clothes in your closet, I’ve filled up your drawers. I’ve left my notes in your files. JARVIS says _sir_ now. And everything that was once _yours_ is mine.)

Good job on building this team. (Sorry for your loss.)

Good _fucking_ job, and I’m here, and you’re not—and if you could just turn the fuck around, if you could just fucking _notice_. Just _remember_ what it felt like to wake up to comfort whenever you needed it. To wake up with no nightmares. To—

That’s what Tony needed, to make her _bleed_ because Steve’s wife had skin made of iron even without the suit. She was impervious to attack, she was built for war. But she was _alone_ in an ugly world. Alone with nothing but Tony’s mistakes and missteps to keep her company.

Tony needed her to remember what she was missing, to _feel_ it just like the despair that it was. To _crave_ the relief only her husband could provide. (I need you to break your wife, Steve. I need you to shatter her.) 

“I don’t know,” was the closest thing to the truth. Tony didn’t know what he needed, didn’t know what would push her past the point of tolerance. (If such a thing existed. If there was even a way to break her.) “What does she think of your whole ‘reason for everything’ speech?”

Steve’s cheeks were pink, he shrugged like a schoolboy. “She doesn’t like to admit to being romantically inclined, so she says its stupid, but I think she likes the idea that I’d rather think I survived so I could be with her.”

“It is stupid.” (But it was nice, too. In its own way.) “Keep believing it.”

# A SIDE

_What_ the fuck are you doing, Tony Stark?

Oh well, laying in bed with fingertip bruises on her back. Laying in bed with Steve Rogers sleeping soundly at her side, curled into his blankets with no worries at all. She was laying in bed luxuriating in sore muscles and bad choices, thinking about how she hated cum on her legs but condoms weren’t anything she’d been thinking about when—

She should have been thinking about how stupid, and how selfish it had been to use Steve. How she was playing with his head, and now his body, and how it hadn’t changed a damn thing. It hadn’t stopped the buzzing in her head, hadn’t stopped the ache in her gut, hadn’t made her _feel_ better at all. 

(She could always try again, always nudge him awake, always invite him back between her thighs. Maybe if she let him get on top it would work this time, maybe she’d stop _feeling_ this—this—)

“Sir,” FRIDAY whispered into the darkened room. “Ms. Potts—”

“Fuck,” Tony answered back. She rolled forward, off the edge of the bed and onto her worn-out legs. There was a litter of clothes on the floor, the things she’d worn the day before and the ones she maybe meant to wear tomorrow. Nothing that she could pull on before Pepper walked right into a living nightmare. Tony found a dress in the closet, the one she’d worn to taunt Steve in the beginning. It slid on like a glove, hugged to all her naked skin—

It wasn’t ideal attire, but it was better than greeting Pepper wearing nothing but Steve’s blue-and-purple fingerprints. Tony made it to the door of the bedroom just in time to watch it be pushed open. Just in time to get a real close up view of Pepper taking stock of the interior, to see the exact moment she realized the lump on the bed was Steve Rogers, and his arms were naked because his chest was naked because he was naked as the day he was born. 

Pepper drew in a breath and turned on her heels. Quiet was worse than screaming—worse than _reacting_. Quiet was making judgments that led to rash actions that led to—

“Pepper!” Tony hissed as she ran down the hall after her, her flat bare footfalls out of tune with Pepper’s furious heel stomps. They were jarred to a halt at the end of the hall, with Pepper spinning around to slap Tony as hard as she could manage. 

(Wasn’t that exactly what she deserved?)

“Don’t touch me,” Pepper said.

“I’m not him,” Tony said. Her hand was cold on her burning face and Pepper’s eyes were ringed in red, but she wasn’t about to cry about Tony’s that couldn’t keep their hands off Steve’s. “Pepper, please. I’m not him.”

“Yes, you are.” Then she was gone, away to the elevators, away out of the tower and Tony’s life, away-away-away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not yet have a tumblr link for this chapter because it's queued, but the general A SIDE/B SIDE link is [Vinyl](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com/tagged/vinyl) which offers teases about new chapters as well as general whining about the writing process.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	24. Chapter 24

# B SIDE

Steve Rogers loved his wife. (Oh, boy, did he ever.) There wasn’t always a victory in loving his wife, there wasn’t always _joy_. Sometimes, loving her was an abyss that ran so deep no man could have seen the light from the bottom. Sometimes, loving her was a lake of fire that ravaged anyone that got too close. Sometimes loving her was an unwanted _chore_.

The newspapers liked to speculate how she’d caught him in her web, how she must have taken advantage of his innocence and his naivety. Newspaper men had the misconception that everything they’d read in his posthumous biographies was based on fact; that Steve Rogers had been born stuffed full of patriotism and righteousness. They liked to think that he was everything good and wholesome that was missing from America these days. Steve Rogers was the ninety-year-old virgin that punched Adolf Hitler right on his face. (Except, Steve had never even seen Adolf Hitler. He hadn’t even gotten close enough to try. Steve’s war had been with Hydra, and he hadn’t won it. He’d died; they regrouped.) 

The virgin part was especially important to the men who wrote the news. It had been especially important to SHIELD just judging by the way they whispered it when they thought he was far enough away he couldn’t hear. It had been important to the Avengers for five minutes, just long enough for Natasha to ask him if it was _really_ really true; long enough for Clint to smack him on the back like it was a shameful tragedy. Long enough for Bruce to look embarrassed by his teammates. 

Long enough for Tony to shake her head at him, to roll her eyes and to never once ask him if it were true. Steve was only a virgin by the virtue of interpretation of a definition. (He didn’t think any of the biographers knew he’d sucked Bucky’s dick more than once, or maybe they had, and they’d all decided it wasn’t important to mention.) 

The point was that Steve was America’s favorite and righteous defender. Her strongest and purest soldier.

What was Tony Stark to the newspapers? She was a careless, crude, oversexed woman that had made a profit from murder and then tried to make herself a heroine with a suit of armor that she could not possibly have built herself. They liked to throw out unending speculation that she couldn’t pilot it. They used words like “allegedly” and “reportedly”. 

(Tony Stark who _allegedly_ built and utilized the first Iron Man armor to escape captivity…) (Tony Stark was reportedly seen assisting civilians escape an active battle…)

The Tony Stark features in the papers was a soulless, spiteful, monstrous woman. She was a nightmare with an unattractive face, that stole and lied and seduced her way to the top. They gave her no credit, no benefit of the doubt— They never outright said (unless they did, like the right wing conspiracy theorists) that she seduced him, or that she manipulated him, or that she had trapped him in their marriage. But there were whispers and inconsiderate questions. There was an undertone of disbelief when they were photographed together. 

Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are _still_ married. 

As they near their first wedding anniversary, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers continue to defy expectations.

Natasha had shown him a website once with the headline,

#### FREE STEVE ROGERS

As if he were being held captive in his wife’s house.

No, Tony hadn’t seduced him with diabolical intentions. He hadn’t seduced her blindly. They had fallen into each other, they had found just enough sameness that it had become _safety_ and that safety had paved the way for _companionship_ had become _love_.

Maybe it was old fashioned to think, maybe because he’d been brought up in a time of practicality. Maybe because he had loved Bucky with wild passion, (and to no end but a long string of quiet disappointments that he might never be loved the same in return). He had loved Peggy _longingly_ , always stumbling over his own feet in hopes of _finally_ finding the courage to make a move. Maybe because Steve had died.

Or because he’d woken up here. 

Steve loved his wife, but it wasn’t perfect. There were days when he didn’t want to spend one single moment around her, or thinking of her, or worrying about her. He wanted nothing but his own space to feel his own anger. (She gave him that space, and she waited for him to come back.)

This was different, this anger that settled in his fists. This anger _wasn’t_ the frustration of dealing with a woman who couldn’t bear to be _wrong_ about anything. This wasn’t an argument that ran six hours longer than any argument ever should have. It wasn’t an impolite disagreement they couldn’t immediately resolve.

No, this was _rage_ and it felt like it was _fire_ everywhere. He’d woken up with it, stretched in the dark of his bedroom and ripped open a wound he didn’t remember getting. It had poured into him, a great red fury that had brought him back to the diamond, to an endless supply of baseballs that needed to be destroyed. 

It had brought him here, to his wife’s unending generosity. To this offering she’d made for him, like a pre-emptive apology for being unyielding. 

Sure, it had brought him here, with the intention to destroy anything that wouldn’t be missed. But he couldn’t bring himself to get a bat, couldn’t seem to motivate himself past standing on the grass, watching the sun creep over the horizon. 

He was a hypocrite, filled up with anger, thinking unkind things about his wife. Thinking things like headlines: 

Tony Stark _allegedly_ fucked a Steve Rogers that wasn’t hers. Tony Stark _still_ not paying attention to the people that miss her. Tony Stark _reportedly_ too busy being angry to care.

# A SIDE

Steve had never, not once, not _ever_ , woke up naked in all of his life. (Not even when he woke up in New York, wearing clothes he hadn’t died in.) He’d never woken up naked because he’d never gone to sleep naked. But here he was, belly-down on a luxurious bed (Tony Stark’s bed), stretching his naked body across the smooth, soft sheets. Here he was, waking up with no troubling thoughts chasing him into consciousness. Just the gentle contentment that came with a truly good sleep. 

(Had he ever slept well? He’d thought he had; he thought he’d slept peacefully, like a baby, but after this well—after this there was no reason to think that anymore.) 

It hadn’t been a choice, necessarily, to sleep naked. He couldn’t swear that it had been his idea, or anyone’s idea. (Steve couldn’t even remember clearly now if he’d been invited to stay or not.) Just that Tony had picked them up off the floor and brought them back here. It was a quick wash up (since sex was as messy as he thought it might have been, just maybe not in the same ways he’d thought it would be) and they had collapsed into the bed. 

Steve’s clothes were still out _there_ so he’d assured himself he would get them when he was done resting. Tony’s room was full of clothes, but she had lounged with her shoulders against the headboard and her shamelessly naked body only fractionally covered by a sheet. Her fingers had ended up threading through his hair because he’d opened his mouth to ask her a few things

(Is it always like that with them? Always aggressive? Always with strong hands and relentless motion, racing and racing toward the finish line? Did she always cry like that?)

But Tony had said, “ask me tomorrow, Rogers,” with her fingers in his hair and no immediate demand that he leave. It was a compromise that he could live with, so he had kept his mouth shut and resolved to get his clothes in just a few minutes.

That was ten and a half hours ago now. Ten and a half hours of uninterrupted sleep. 

If Steve had the energy to be angry about anything, he might have been scandalized to have slept so long. He might have been on his feet shouting about lost time when he’d already lost enough time. (Time, and friends, and opportunities.) But right now, he rolled onto his back. He listened to the silence; he enjoyed the quiet and the lazy contentment of being well-rested.

When he was ready (and not a moment before) he picked himself up and went to get his clothes. He’d expected they’d be in the puddles where they were left, but he found them on a table by the bedroom door. Each piece meticulously folded and stacked in the order he preferred to put them on. (Underwear, pants, shirt, socks—) He pulled on his underwear first.

“FRIDAY, where is Tony?”

“Mr. Stark is in the bathroom, sir.”

Of course, she was. Steve pulled his pants on but left them unbuttoned. The bathroom door wasn’t even closed all the way, just mostly. He hovered with his hand on the wood, working out how he wanted to proceed. Intimacy was a funny thing. Bucky would kiss him full on the mouth in the cover of their shared apartment, and he’d bite his knuckles in an alley way with his dick in Steve’s mouth. But Bucky never took all his clothes off in front of anyone. The men in the barracks were indifferent with their naked bodies, but they wouldn’t have been if they’d known what kind of things Steve had gotten up to with Bucky. 

Peggy had shared her secrets with him, but he’d never had any reason to put his hands all over her body. 

Steve had sex with Tony and he had _no_ idea what that meant. (He had some ideas, he knew things like how they weren’t _in love_ when they were barely coasting by on civility.) He didn’t know where the boundaries lay, and it stalled his fist halfway up to knock on the door.

It might have been politer to simply walk away. (It might have been easier too.) He knocked on the door, feeling like an idiot, waiting for someone to answer him back: “Tony?”

“I wasn’t sure you had it in you, Rogers.”

At least her attitude hadn’t changed. He was working out how to say _you weren’t in bed_ without making it sound like he was expecting that she might have. He wanted a casual observation. _You weren’t in the last place I saw you_. He wanted to sound as if he had some idea what he was doing, but he was just sighing to himself, looking over at the rumpled bed, thinking how much nicer the day had been before he’d gotten up. 

“Calm down,” she called from inside the bathroom. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

# A SIDE

The bathtub had gone tepid from too long spent letting the water soak away her sins. It might have been asking too much of a puddle of water; it might have been too optimistic to think that it was even possible. She held her breath and she slid under the water, searching for something like absolution and settling for quiet.

 

Under the water, the world was a different place. Sounds were shaped differently to her ears. Light moved strangely across her closed eyelids. Space was infinite and non-existent. She was completely covered but _floating_. 

It was like being a dream; like existing in alternate place. In this place, she wasn’t an adulteress. She hadn’t been seen naked in bed with Steve Rogers by Pepper Potts. She hadn’t ruined what remained of a salvageable relationship. 

Under the water, it was only Tony and the inside of her mind, where that _tingly_ sensation kept buzzing and buzzing like an alarm that couldn’t be turned off. Waaaaaake up. Wa-wa-wa-wake up. W-A-A-ke Uhhhhhhp.

The longer she concentrated on it, the less it made _sense_. The less _defined_ it became. At first it was a sensation, a tapping, and then it seemed to open up, seemed to diffuse through her whole body. It coiled itself around her heart and it _squeezed_ , so she was laying under the water with her lungs burning as bright as fire, and her heart _aching_.

But—

But. It wasn’t her. Those things weren’t things that she was feeling. (Not regret, not shame, not worry, not—) They were mirrors of things she’d felt the night before; loneliness, homesickness, _longing_. She’d fucked Steve because she couldn’t stand how much she _craved_ her husband, (and she knew that now, because she could _feel_ it wrapped around her heart) but she hadn’t felt like this. She’d been numb.

This thing that was spreading through her bloodstream wasn’t numb. It was completely alive, and aware, and _intentional_. It was coiled up in guilt, laced through with raw desire and a fragile, brand-new sensation of _love_.

Oh, that poor miserable bastard that woke up in her world had never met a Steve Rogers like her husband. He’d never been slowly and completely seduced by Steve’s honest affection, but his earnest efforts to be a friend, a teammate, a lover. _Mr._ Stark couldn’t possibly see that moment coming, that moment when you found yourself in the bathroom of Avengers’ Tower having what felt like a panic attack, trying to convince yourself you were just an idiot that you couldn’t _possibly_ love Steve, but you _did_ , god damn you _did_. 

Mr. Stark had no idea what was about to happen to him; but he _wanted_ to know. 

That’s what she felt, that’s what was filling up the hollow insides of her limbs. It was his hope, and his confusion, and his starvation for comfort that was making her skin hurt. 

It was all that, and _exasperation_. He’d been waiting for her and that was a funny feeling in her skull. He’d been waiting and _waiting_. 

(How long had he been waiting? How many times had he tried before he’d settled on reminding her how much she loved her husband? How far had he taken it? Had he put his hands on Steve? Fucked him?)

What did it matter, when she’d broken his Steve. What did it matter, when she’d broken her own wedding vows? (When she’d broken Pepper’s heart.)

Tony dragged herself out of the tub and into clothes and down to the kitchen. She found Steve looking at an empty mug of coffee, almost smiling to himself. (And God damn Steve Rogers stupid smiles. God damn all of them, so perfectly happy with such meager offerings. Smiling at empty cups thinking about a good night’s rest and a hurried fuck on the floor. God damn Steve Rogers could make victories out of defeats just by turning their heads a different way.) She pulled the pot out of the maker and grabbed herself a cup before she sat down. 

Their mugs were filled and steaming, giving them a nice backdrop to have an awkward conversation. 

“Good morning,” Steve said. (And his face broadcasting _tell me what I’m supposed to do now, tell me what just happened and why and how I did._ ) “Did you—uh, sleep well?”

“Your Tony is smarter than I am,” she said. There was no creamer on the table, so she had to get up again. “Maybe not smarter,” not that she was too arrogant to admit it was a possibility, “but more attuned with his emotions.”

“Tony?”

She dropped the sugar and the creamer on the table because she’d forgotten a spoon. “I can feel him,” she said. (What a stupid conversation to try to have right _now_.) “He’s been waiting for me, I can feel that. It’s not a thought, it’s a feeling, it’s right here,” she tapped on her forehead as if she could pin down the exact part of the brain this transfer was happening. “I don’t know why I can feel him, and I don’t know how long he’s been able to feel me, but I get the impression he’s getting a little annoyed waiting for me.”

This was not the sort of conversation that Steve wanted to have. “So, you’re saying he’s been trying to get your attention?”

“Yes, but he can only use feelings.”

Steve turned his coffee cup between his hands, “what feelings is he using? What feeling made you notice him?”

She sipped her scalding hot coffee, licked the bitterness off her lips. “He wants me to remember how much I love my husband. How much I miss being able to touch him.” Just saying it was like being stabbed in the gut, it was hot and wet at her eyes, filling up her chest until she couldn’t say anything. Not one damn thing, just her scowl staring into the coffee cup on the table.

# B SIDE

Tony was not a dream doctor. The subconscious was not an area that he could claim any sort of expertise about. (As if expertise regarding dreams was really a thing that could be attained.) But he could remember hearing, now and again, that dreams simply didn’t _work_ the way reality did. They didn’t make sense, they weren’t mean to be lucid and _real_. 

But this made _sense_. 

It wasn’t Pepper to his left, sipping her colorful drink in the sunshine. It wasn’t the glimmer of her sweet strawberry red hair, it wasn’t her perfect, pale skin. It was—

“I’m not here,” Tony Stark herself, looking unimpressed to have found herself wearing a bikini on a beach. Her skin wasn’t perfect but pocked with scars, the places where the shrapnel had hit, and the suit had cut her, and— The arc reactor, glimmering blue, like a friendly blue nightlight set in her chest. “If I had to guess, I would say that I’m the sum of your subconscious ideas and feelings about me. But,” her finger touched a scar on her leg with a fond sort of smile. “There are details here that you couldn’t have thought up.” Her fingers touched behind her ear, parted the hair and found a scar there, just a slim raised line. When she turned her head to look at him, her brown eyes were so familiar it was like looking in a mirror. “So, what do we think this is?”

“You think I know?” Tony couldn’t barely move his limbs here. He couldn’t do more than turn half on his side to take her in. His arms couldn’t cross over the arm of the chair, his legs couldn’t hang over the side. 

“Why wouldn’t you? You found the bridge first.” She sighed and pulled her legs up, turned in the seat so she was sitting cross-legged and facing him. “I don’t wear bikinis,” she said. Her fingers pinched the rolls of skin on her stomach, her thumb ran across a twisted scar on her ribs. “Dream me up a simple one-piece.”

“I don’t control this,” he said. “You were Pepper last time.” (You’ll have to do this one alone, Tony.) There were a thousand things he wanted to ask her, about how she had lived her life, how she’d defeated the black vacuum of space. He wanted to know if she’d ever had anxiety attacks, and what she’d done. If it really made such a difference, falling in love with Steve. He wanted to ask her what she’d done in his world, and what had happened while he was gone. If anyone had noticed, or missed him, but those were questions for the real world. “So, it’s working.”

“I fucked Steve,” she said like it was hardly worthy of note. Her shoulders lifted, and they dropped. 

“Sorry.” (Only because she didn’t seem to know how she wanted to feel about it. Only because he had been hoping she would do _something_ when she couldn’t stand the _wanting_.) “I thought we were past the part of our lives where we had sex with virgins.”

Tony had a pretty smile, with a twinkle in her eyes. “I wonder how many of us can say they got to take Steve’s technical virginity twice?” But the smile didn’t stick, it faded, “I wish I could give it back. It wasn’t doing him any good but—it shouldn’t have been the way I made it. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a dick. But, he’s lonely. I remember what my husband was like when he was lonely. Don’t let Steve fool you, Tony. He’s just as human as the rest of us.”

“What?”

The same old nightmare was creeping at the edge of his sunny seaside dream. He could feel it over his shoulder, feel how it’s long-long-spider legs were tiptoeing across the partially rendered sand. Everything in front of him was sunny and bright, but _she_ was staring down his nightmare with grim-gritted teeth. “I don’t think we’re at the same time,” she said, “I think I got here late. But I’m paying attention now. You have to keep digging, Tony. And remember about Steve.”

Tony woke up alone. The sheets were already cooled, the room had already settled. There was, just a fleeting moment, what felt perfectly like peace. What a funny feeling that was, to wake up alone and to feel _okay_ with it. To lay in the gathering sunlight and feel _good_.

(Had it been so long? Had it been so fucking long that he couldn’t remember the last time?)

“JARVIS,” he said. 

“Sir.”

“Play me something light.” The music was the wordless kind, just a gentle melody of instruments to accompany his lazy body in the lazy bed. Just for that moment, it felt like he could be still, and listen, and enjoy it. 

(It felt like he accomplished something. Something he could almost remember.)

# B SIDE

Tony employed a small staff to work the main level of the Avengers’ satellite office. They were dressed in business casual, doing some sort of work on the computers every time he saw them. He remembered one of them was named Destiny and one of them was named Karma but he couldn’t exactly remember what part of the overall Avengers’ machine they worked on. (Social media seemed likely, what with how much they looked like the sort of people that could gauge the changing attitude of the internet.) 

“Good morning, sir,” they said when they saw him. Not always like this, not always wearing whatever clothes were laying around that morning. Not always still wearing a baseball cap he hadn’t bothered to pull off when he stepped inside. Not always when he had nothing to say to them (so he just said nothing at all). 

The elevator took him to the basement; to the reinforced door with the pin code required. Natasha liked to call it a miniature command room, but Tony assured her there was enough hardware in the room to drop the word ‘miniature’. Tony liked to assure people of a lot of things; this is unbreakable. This is secure. This is _safe_. 

Funny how Steve had never once doubted her at her word; how he’d always accepted that when she said it would be _alright_ that it would be. When she said she was going to take care of something it was cared for. When she said something was safe, their best option, their—

(No, no. There was no need to go off doubting everything she’d ever done because she’d fucked another Steve before he’d gotten to fuck another Tony. There was no need to think there was a cataclysmic shift in her personality, in his love for her, in anything at all.)

For that matter, was there even a reason to think she _had_ ; just because he’d woken up _feeling_ like she did?

“JARVIS.” The screens blinked on, the diagnostic ran code that scattered across the screens like snowflakes. The keyboards started to glow on the smooth command surface, waiting for input and timing out. Steve pulled up a chair and waited. (And waited, and waited.)

“Yes, Captain?” felt like it had taken an hour, but the timer on the screen assured him it was less then a minute. (Tony had told him that too, how the command center would have to be booted up to be operational. How they couldn’t very well leave a perfectly operational war room laying around the city.) “Mr. Stark has asked about your location. Should I tell him you are at the satellite office command room?”

“No,” Steve said. “I need to make a call.”

“Very well.” The screen ran a new code and the panel opened up just far enough to reveal a phone. Tony’s sense of humor was an outdated phone receiver. She could have made it anything, but she made it a nineteen-seventy classic. “What number should I dial, Captain?”

(Call the other universe, put my wife on the phone, let me tell her everything I think about what she’s been doing. Let me tell her one more time that she doesn’t _have_ to be unmovable, that she didn’t need to be so rough, so untouchable, so—

_Strong_? 

That sounded like the word he’d use to describe her. If someone at a bar ever took the time to ask him what he thought of his wife. Because Tony was stronger than anyone should have had to be, because she’d survived by being stronger than the men that wanted to take her down, because she had never given an inch in her whole fucking life.)

Steve pulled the hat off his head, dropped it on the panel and scratched his fingers through his hair. “Bucky,” he said. “I want to talk to Bucky.”

“Of course, Captain,” JARVIS said. “It may take a moment to establish a secure connection.”

Just a _moment_. A _moment_ for JARVIS to make a call to Steve’s best friend, his first love, an infamous former assassin, an internationally wanted criminal, and the man who had killed Tony’s parents. 

“Fuck,” he said to the screens, to himself, to the jumble of things filling up his body. He was _offended_ with a sense of betrayal, caught up in uncomplicated _anger_. It _hurt_ to know (to _feel_ as if he knew) that she’d fucked another man. Steve had no legs to stand on, he was completely without defense or moral high ground, but it still _hurt_.

“I have established the connection, Captain.”

There was a little red light blinking next to the phone receiver, and on the other side of it Bucky was waiting for him to pick up. Steve hesitated, and that was stupid when he’d come all this way just to make this call. He hesitated with his fingers sliding across the receiver, feeling like maybe this was it’s own kind of betrayal. 

(Look, Buck, it’s like this. My wife was replaced by a man. He’s everything Tony would be if someone turned her inside out, if they took all her armor and covered it with those emotions she never wants to admit she has. He’s a raw fucking wound, like he’s forgotten how strong he is. And there was a girl in another country, with sneaky fingers that stirred up my brain, so I have no wife and I have no job and I have no purpose. I’ve run out of modern day friends to call, and my wife just fucked another man and—)

“Hey,” he said when he picked up the phone, when he pressed it against his ear, head tipped forward, body leaning in against the panel like he could get any more private than a locked room in a basement.

“I was wondering if we lost the connection,” Bucky said. “You forget how to use the phone?”

Steve closed his eyes. “No. You got a minute Buck?”

Bucky had an infinity of minutes, he had all the time in the world. Wherever he was, he was settling into place, phone pressed to his ear as he got comfortable. “Yeah, sure, Steve. What is it?”

Well, you see—

# A SIDE

Wasn’t that just a kick in the God-damn pants? There weren’t many better excuses to pardon yourself of questionable choices than your alternate self sending you emotional suggestions. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Tony’s. Not _Mrs. Rogers_ fault surely, but _Mr. Stark_ who was busy in the universe that wasn’t his, sending lusty, longing thoughts—

“That’s why you had sex with me?” (Wasn’t that just a punch in the gut.)

Tony pulled her stare away from the cup of coffee like a kid dragging her feet. She looked to his left, not at him, but almost. “Probably.” (Yes.) “Not because of your Tony, but because sometimes you are so much like him that I can’t stand it.”

_Sometimes_. Steve had her husband’s face, his body, his _dick_ (since maybe that mattered), but he wasn’t her husband because he wasn’t _man_ enough. Because she still looked at him with reserve, with condescension. (Why wouldn’t she, she hadn’t liked him yesterday morning, she hadn’t liked him the day before, why the fuck would she like now? Just because she used him to satisfy an urge? Because she’d let him sleep in her bed? What the hell did that change?)

“But I’m not him.” There was an ugly smile on his face. (Wasn’t that just a fucking kick in the ass?) “That’s why you were crying. God damn it.” He hadn’t meant to stand up so fast, he hadn’t meant to knock the chair back, to make it fall over. That was the trouble with being born a weak kid but becoming a strong man. You forgot about chairs.

Tony looked _offended_. (Offended. As if he had grabbed her with both of his fists and dragged her down and—) “You’re missing the point,”

“What point am I missing? You miss your husband, and I look just like him but I’m not him. I’m not half the man that he is— You missed your husband so you _used_ me to feel better and congratulations your husband is such a great guy that even _my_ ,” (only by virtue of sharing a common universe), “Tony wants to fuck him. What point am I missing? The point where you do something that doesn’t solely benefit you?”

Tony closed her eyes, she was still sitting, palms flat to the table, with her eyes closed. There was pink in her chees and a gathering dampness to her eyes. Her lips were moving, reciting numbers by rote, counting one to twenty or twenty-thousand. “How,” she asked with her voice cracking, “does this benefit me? How? I fucked up, Steven. Pepper—” she lifted her hand to point outward toward the elevators in another room, “saw us, saw _you_ naked in her boyfriend’s bed. How does that benefit me? Benefit Tony?” There were tears in her lashes now, her voice was raw, “I _cheated_ on my husband. _With_ my husband,” her fingers were spread out, pointed at him,” _Nothing_ I’ve done since I got here has _benefited_ me in any way!”

Well fucking _imagine_ that. The woman was capable of remorse, of shame and regret and—

“It hasn’t been great for me either,” he said.

She made a noise like a laugh that couldn’t get started. Her head was shaking back and forth as she ran her thumb across the gathering wetness on her eyelashes. There was a tear or two already sliding down her face that she rubbed away with her balled up fist. 

(What a fucking disaster, him standing there feeling like a heel for getting taken advantage of, for making her cry _twice_. Her sitting there crying over her husband and her choices and—)

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, and bent forward to pick up the chair. “What are you supposed to do with this _feeling_?”

She sniffled, shrugged, “I have no fucking idea.”

# A SIDE

Steve just nodded his head as he set the chair right. He was still nodding his head as he sat down, and once he was back to the start, they were just looking at one another, trying to figure out how they’d gone in a complete circle. “Tony Stark always has a fucking idea,” was the brilliant thing that Steve thought up to say.

“Maybe the other one does,” she said, “this one doesn’t. At the moment.”

Steve pulled his coffee back toward him. He sighed to himself, leaning back in his chair, looking at the mug and not at her. “So, Tony wants to have sex with me? Well, not _me_ but your husband?”

“That’s not the most important part of what I said, but yes. He does.” 

“Tony doesn’t even like me,” Steve said. He glanced sideways at her. “Tony’s not even gay.”

Well, sexuality was more of a spectrum in her experience. She had a special love for women, a certain expected attraction to women who looked good in pretty dresses. She had an unfortunate taste for women with lipstick smiles that looked at her with eyes that promised she’d regret them in the morning. Oh, hell, but— “Steve. I’ve had sex with four guys and more women than I’d like to say. You’ve had sex with one man and one woman. People can call themselves whatever they like, and they can be attracted to whoever they like. I promise you that Tony has _definitely_ thought about having sex with you. _You_ , not my husband.” 

“He’s never—” Steve frowned, and _thought_. “He never acted like he wanted to—”

This wasn’t the conversation that they needed to be having. It wasn’t anywhere near close to the one they needed to have. Tony needed to get _home_ and Steve needed—

(That was a funny thing to stumble over. Six days ago she could have listed what felt like an infinite number of things that Steve needed. He needed to grow up. He needed to grow a pair. He needed to get a clue. He needed—needed, _needed_ … What?)

“He never showed off his pretty feathers in your direction? I find it hard to believe that. But,” she had to concede the point, “he was dating Pepper. Maybe he didn’t.”

Steve sighed at that. “Why was she here?”

Pepper was here because she was _worried_. Because she had relationships to mend, and a boyfriend to worry over. All emphasis on _had_. “She and Happy keep trying to talk to me.”

“You won’t talk to them?” Steve kept moving his coffee cup a few centimeters in one direction and few centimeters back. It was idle, wasteful motion, but it gave him something to do with his hands. “They did what they thought was best.”

“I know.” (She did know; she did understand. But knowing, and understanding did not always equal forgiving.) “They don’t owe me anything. I don’t owe them anything. That’s what happens when you always do what you think is best.”

Steve frowned at that, just a slight tightening of his lips, a down pull at the edges. It was the exact face that her husband made when she said it. Steve was a great man and a man who could do great things, but he was a man made to _do the right thing_ and to do it no matter the cost. Sometimes the cost was friendships, sometimes it was his life, and sometimes it was his freedom and it didn’t matter. Steve would always choose the right thing. Tony believed in right, and she believed in _loyalty_. There were things more powerful than _right_. That was why Steve laid on the wire and Tony cut the damn thing. “So, your husband, he hasn’t slept with Tony?”

No. No, he hadn’t. “I don’t believe so.”

“So, he’s mad?” Steve looked up again. He had a young face when he was trying not to be hurtful. “I’d be mad.”

“I can’t change what happened yesterday,” she said. There was no answer for his question. There was nothing she could do about it now. “I wish you could have had a different first experience.” (I’m sorry, was what she meant to say but wasn’t.) “If you’d rather pretend it didn’t happen, I don’t mind.”

Steve snorted at that. “I don’t see how that would do either of us any good.” He sat up straighter and picked up the coffee cup he was never going to drink out of. “So, what are we going to do? How are we going to answer Tony’s message?”

She wasn’t. She wasn’t going to even try to answer Tony. Because he was wrapped up in the fantastic reality of falling in love with Steve Rogers. That was going to end in disaster (because she was _definitely_ going to find her way home. She was _absolutely_ getting her husband back) but it was one hell of a ride to be on. Steve had a way of consuming a person’s entire focus. 

Or maybe it was more selfish than that. Maybe it was because she wasn’t ready to answer him back, to tell him what she’d done to his world— Maybe it was because she knew Steve better, because she knew how to get to him, because she wanted—

(What the hell did she want? She wanted to get _home_.)

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Ideas about how to send emotional telegrams to Tony Stark?” Steve shook his head. “I mean,” was thinking through his immediate rejection, “I know what scares him. I don’t think that would make him want to come back.” When he finally lifted the coffee to his mouth, he sipped gently and scowled at the taste.

Wasn’t that the hell of it? The man who had no reason to want to come back _here_ had found a crack in the universe. The man who had been mistreated by his own world and figured out how to get her attention because he’d been looking. He had been looking and she hadn’t. That was the hell of it.

# B SIDE

What this world was missing (the only thing it was missing, as far as Tony could tell) was the Mark 42. The nearest she’d come to anything like it was the Mark VII, and the faint idea of something more advanced. She’d happened across the notion of something more advanced than bracelets to help the suit find her, but she hadn’t had the _need_ to implant tracking devices under her skin. 

Just because the world had been good to Tony so _far_ didn’t mean they would always be good to her. Just because she hadn’t _needed_ it yet didn’t mean she would never need it. (In fact, if comfort bought the sort of thinking that was satisfied with limited advancement, Tony would take a side-dish of anxiety just to keep progress going forward.) Tony might never have needed Igor to shore up a falling building, but he’d built the damn suit anyway. (And in the end, he had needed it, at least the one time.) 

“Sir,” had been JARVIS’ very excellent objection when told to title the project Mark 42. “What about Mark 22?”

“Let it go,” Tony answered. “We’re going to do some things differently while I’m here.”

JARVIS either did not have an answer to that, or he couldn’t compute the confusion of the statement. Everyone else in the world had noticed but JARVIS still hadn’t figured out that Tony wasn’t _Tony_. He had simple opened the file and saved the data and offered important tidbits of information when Tony had forgotten something.

The main problem with creating the Mark 42 _here_ and right _now_ was that he had been up to his ears in panic when he’d done it the last time. He had been high on caffeine and no sleep, mixing daytime drinking and coffee in an effort to stave off the dark corners of his mind. He’d locked himself in the lab for weeks that became _months_ and he’d built dozens of suits. The Mark 42 was a culmination of his fears, the last, best idea he had about how to protect (Pepper) himself. 

The sun was shining here. The forecast was good. He’d slept the night before and he planned to sleep tonight. With a clear head, with enough sleep, he couldn’t quite remember the feverish decisions he’d made before.

Add that onto the fact that Ms. Stark had structured the internal components of her suit just _slightly_ different than he had his own, and well—there were a few things holding him up. 

“JARVIS,” he asked while he stared at a tricky bit of wiring he couldn’t get right. “Do we have any arc reactors?”

“No sir,” JARVIS said. “Per the agreement, our only prefabricated arc reactors are stored in a secure vault in Avengers Tower.”

There was complacency and then there was suicidal stupidity. “Six years ago, Obadiah walked into this house and took the arc reactor out of my chest.”

It wasn’t meant to be a question, but JARVIS answered it anyway: “Yes sir.”

“She can’t survive without the arc reactor, JARVIS. Why the hell would she agree not to keep one on hand? What exactly is her plan if someone tries to remove it again?” (She didn’t have a plan, that was what the long silence said to him. She didn’t have one fucking idea what she would do if another man with a grudge came through her door looking to steal something she’d made. Her home was sacred, and safe and full of things that were made by a woman who wasn’t afraid of being taken by surprise.) “I need one,” Tony said. “To test the suit.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” JARVIS said. “Per the agreement it would require—”

Tony might have argued JARVIS down from agreeing with anyone that wasn’t him. (Then again, it was most likely _her_ that had amended the programming to prohibit the creation of another arc reactor. It wasn’t as if Tony couldn’t build one with his own hands if it was necessary. He’d done it before. It was just simpler if it could be fabricated as quickly as the suit.) But he was interrupted by the sound of the lab door being pulled open. He spun in his chair, (expecting it to be Steve) and found Pepper standing there with tears in her eyes. 

“What?” Tony was on his feet, across the room and stopped just before his hands could slide up her arms. “What happened? Is everyone okay—what? What happened?”

“Pepper knows,” Pepper said. “I— I don’— I feel like my heart is broken, I feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” She was the one that moved, the one that slid her arms around his chest, that tucked her face in against his chest. She hugged him with tears soaked into his shirt, crying about—

Oh hell, he should have known. He should have known just from the _relief_ he’d woken up with. From how Steve wasn’t in bed, or the house, or anywhere JARVIS could locate. _She_ must have finally felt it, finally given in to everything he’d been trying to pour into her chest. She’d made do with what she had. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said to Pepper, into her hair as she cried. He hugged her back, and let her cry and—

(This is what he thought he was willing to risk; what he must have thought he’d never have to actually _see_ , what he wouldn’t be present to _experience_ , how he had _finally_ finished breaking Pepper’s heart.)

# B SIDE

“Does he want to sleep with you?” Bucky asked.

At the end of a conversation that lasted hours, long after he’d labored through explaining how his wife had become his husband and how he’d had his head fucked over so all his dreams were sopping wet nightmares, the thing that Bucky got stuck on was the sex. (That was fair, people always seemed to get stuck on sex.) 

“I think so.”

Bucky hummed to himself, taking that in and thinking about how he wanted to ask Steve what he was waiting for. “How do you know she already slept with the other you?”

“I _feel_ it.” Like an ugly, possessive, furious living thing thrashing around in his gut. Wrestling his every instinct to immediately lash out had exhausted him through the day and brought him here, sagging over the panel in the command room, rubbing his forehead while he waited for Bucky to tell him what to do now. “I shouldn’t be angry. I have no right to be angry. I was— I would have slept with him if he hadn’t stopped us.”

“Steve,” was simply exhausted. As if Bucky had any right to be exhausted just from listening. “Don’t do that. You always do that. Not all things have to be about _right_. Sometimes shit happens.”

Shit had happened to them. (And once, a very long time ago, Bucky had been one of those shitty things that happened to Steve. There was no right or wrong in how their friendship had almost fallen apart over young man fantasies. It had only been Steve’s overtaxed heart against Bucky’s graceless lack of commitment. Look at them now, long past the shit that happened sometimes.) “What the hell am I supposed to do, Buck? I don’t know what to do.”

Bucky sighed. “You’re Steve Rogers.” 

“Not the one my wife fucked.”

“I understand that,” Bucky said, “but you’re still him, still Steve. My stupid best friend that never once listened to anyone ever in his life. Why are you calling me? What do you think I can do? Tell you what you should do? I told you not to do anything stupid once, you signed up to be a science experiment. Good or bad, you always make your own choices. So, what do you want from me? You want me to tell you that you can be angry at her? Be angry. But—” Bucky wasn’t made for giving long speeches. Not before, and not now, he spoke like the words were being pulled out of his throat. “Whatever you do next, don’t do it to hurt her. I don’t know your wife as well as you do, but I know she loves you more than you probably deserve.”

“I just want her back. I just want things to be normal again,” Steve said.

“With you, things are never normal.” Bucky cleared his throat. “Look, I was going to take a shower before you called. I’ve been kind of sitting here naked listening to you talk. Do whatever you’ve already decided to do about Tony. Go back to work. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Why did you answer the phone if you were naked?” (That was an image he didn’t need in his head, mixing up with his anger and his misdirected lust. The image of Bucky sitting on his bed with nothing but a well-placed pillowcase in his lap.) 

Bucky was just _finished_ with the whole conversation, saying, “how often do you call? It had to be important. Good luck, Steve.” 

Yeah. He might have said thank you, or good bye, or _you too_ but the line went dead. Steve set the receiver back and the panel slid shut over it. The screens blinked back awake, waiting for his next command, but Steve just leaned back into the chair. 

He was Steve Rogers (of course he was) and he already knew what he was going to do (but did he?) All he had to do now was to stop pretending he didn’t.

# A SIDE

The drive from Stark tower to the Avenger’s compound had never felt so short. There was hardly enough time from stepping onto the elevator and leaving Tony alone in the endless space of the uninhabited top floors to standing outside the doors of the compound. Steve needed _time_.

(He could have had some, if he hadn’t slept for ten damn hours.)

Instead, he was greeted at the door by Hill, carrying a tablet propped on one arm, wearing a frown, saying everything in a rush like: “good of you to return. I’ve been stalling the men that are here to do a final fitting of the costume for an hour. Don’t worry, I gave them the good coffee and then Sam started talking to them about what an eyesore the original outfit was. He did a five minute long comedy set on whether or not your first costume was made of spandex.” 

Steve was missing the third button on his shirt. There were no noticeable gaps, no overt indication that he’d lost it somewhere on the kitchen floor, or how he’d lost it. Hill didn’t notice, or care, that he was missing a button on the outfit he’d worn yesterday. “I don’t think it was spandex.”

“Spandex was invented in 1959,” Hill said. “He also referred to your helmet as a condom hat. Do you have an undershirt on?”

“What?” Steve asked. He ran his hand down the front of his shirt, feeling for any holes and found nothing at all. 

Hill was looking at his neck, lips pressed together, completely unimpressed at whatever she saw. “Nice hickey.” Then she turned to start walking with the clear expectation that he would follow. 

Steve stopped at the first mirror they passed to tip his head back and run his fingers over the soft-colored bruise not yet healed on his neck. (That was impressive in its own way, considering how quickly minor injuries faded. He couldn’t remember exactly when she’d done it, but there it was, still a fading brown color.) “It’ll be gone by tomorrow,” he said to the mirror, and Hill’s back. 

“I’m sure,” Hill said. “Are their scratches on your back too? The last thing we need at the moment is for you to take your shirt off in front of the costume designers to show them all your sex injuries.”

“It’s not an injury.”

“It’s a bruise.”

Steve frowned, and Hill frowned back. “I’m wearing an undershirt.” Just like his Mother had taught him. They continued forward, into the room with two stressed looking costume designers worrying over seams and loose threads, standing on one side of the table like they were afraid of Sam on the other side. Sam was in the middle of a story, feeling pleased with himself if the pink of his cheeks was anything to go by. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Steve said when he walked in. “I was—” Trying to figure out how the woman I had sex with felt about having sex with me, and honestly I have no idea how she feels about it or how I feel about but I bet her husband sure is pissed about it. “Finishing some important business.”

There was no mistaking the exact moment Sam saw the hickey because his pleased smile turned feral and he opened his mouth to say something right-out-loud, right-there in-front-of- _everyone_. He would have too, but Hill slid between Steve and Sam and said, “Sam, I think they need you in the gym.”

“Right,” Sam said as he got to his feet. He slapped Steve on the back as he walked passed, but he kept his thoughts to himself in an act of self-control that must have been taking all his effort. Steve was left alone with the two men with straight pins clasped in their fingers and Hill who had the expression of a woman who definitely wouldn’t mind watching him get stabbed. 

“Let’s get started,” Hill said. “We have to make it to the rehearsal tonight.”

Steve escaped an hour and a half later, with little pinpricks all over his body and the uncomfortable feeling of having been touched _everywhere_. It left him in need of a shower, and he’d had every intention of going directly there, except that Sam was standing in his doorway with Rhodey right next to him.

“I’m telling you,” Sam was saying, “it’s a hickey.”

“It can’t be a hickey,” Rhodey objected. 

“A _hickey_.”

Steve stopped a foot in front of them, hands resting on his hips, waiting for them to summon up some sense of shame about making such a big deal about nothing. What they did instead was stare at his neck with no pretense of being embarrassed about it at all. No, they were squinting, making their own assessments and guesses about it. Rhodey shook his head and Sam waved his hand in the air as if there was no _other_ possible explanation. “It’s a hickey,” he said.

“Ha!” Sam said.

“I thought you went to see Tony,” Rhodey countered. (And yesterday morning, Steve would have agreed with Rhodey, how absurd the idea of getting a hickey from Tony would have been. But things had happened, but not quite changed, and now he had a hickey and a whole new problem about what to do with Mrs. Rogers.) 

“I did,” he said, “can I get into my room.”

Rhodey recoiled with outrage, opened his mouth, and then closed it and shook his head, saying, “you know what, it’s not worth it.” He was walking away, leaving just Sam standing in front of the door, looking as confused as Rhodey was outraged.

“Tony?” Sam said. “You’ve been keeping this,” his hand waved at Steve’s body, “to yourself for ninety four? Five? Years and you chose _Tony_?” But it wasn’t offensive, just confused, just working through the same thing that Steve was but without the benefit of having had sex with her. “Natasha’s going to be pissed.”

“Looks like she’ll have to get in line,” Steve said. “I just want a shower. Can I get into my room?”

Sam slid sideways, trying not to say anything else, and like he couldn’t help it, “was it any good?”

How the hell was he supposed to know what it was? What the hell did he have to compare it to? Steve said, “a gentleman doesn’t discuss a lady,” as he pushed open his door.

Sam coughed a laugh behind him, “well you’re not a gentleman and she’s not a lady.” He left anyway, following after the same route Rhodey had gone.

# A SIDE

_Alright_ , she thought to herself, like the first word of very long story. The chair she pulled out was only a chair, no different right _now_ than it had been the day before. The keyboard under her fingers was no different, the files she pulled up hadn’t changed at all. All these things he’d made were precisely as he’d left them.

It was only her that had changed. It was only her intention, her _understanding_ of the man she was replacing that had changed. 

Yesterday, the day before, the week before and the week before that, she had been _outraged_. She had been _overwhelmed_ with the magnitude of little betrayals and slights. She’d funneled her energy in her fury and she’d set out to exact her righteous revenge.

But that was yesterday, early in the day, before she’d dragged Steven down and wrapped her legs around him. It was before she’d run her fingers through his hair, and watched him sleep. It was before she’d woken up in _his_ bed with a man who wasn’t her husband.

Before she knew.

That was the thing. _That_ was the key point that all her righteous fury was missing; all this time she’d been beating her fists against the _injustice_ of the world. She’d been screaming at the faces of people who were not her friends. She’d gotten caught up, she’d gotten dragged down—

Just like all those friendless faces, she had _not_ seen Tony. She hadn’t been looking, because it hadn’t mattered to her who or what this Tony was. It had only mattered who and what _Steve_ was, and how they had _failed_. 

(That’s all this world was, from the moment she’d woken up in it, one failure after another. They hadn’t become friends, or family, or even teammates. They hadn’t prevented disaster but contributed to it. They hadn’t protected each other, they had assaulted and belittled and fought each other. The great, awful sum of them were failures.)

But _he_ had found what she couldn’t. _He_ had been looking while she hadn’t. _He_ had been patient and _persistent_ and _committed_. He had known what he was losing when he started, and he had _started_ nonetheless. _He_ had put his heart into it, tied his success up with his happiness, and she had—

She had done the same to _him_ as every other miserable member of his team had. She had assumed he was incapable, uncaring and careless, despite all the evidence. She had assumed he would luxuriate in the _good_ life she’d left behind. (But look at her, look at how she’d been _wallowing_ in the life she’d woken up in.) 

Tony had sent her a message, and he’d done it the same as he had survived his life, with relentless progress. There was nothing she could send back to him, nothing that would change their present situation. She _wanted_ to be home and he was already willing to give up anything to get her there. 

It had to be Steve. It had to be her husband. She had to get to _him_ (but she didn’t know why, only that he was key). 

_Alright,_ she thought to herself, _lets do this_.

# B SIDE

Tony was out on the balcony, thinking about thinking about a good drive to the nearest liquor store. He didn’t have them mapped out because in his universe, in his Malibu, he had never needed to _drive_ to get to one. It had always been there, always filled to the fill line, waiting for him to wander past with a little taste for something you poured out of a decanter. Liquor had been as available to him as food, as water, as shelter for as long as he could remember. 

But here he was, leaning forward against the railing, watching the sun start its gradual descent toward the horizon. Here he was without a single drop of liquor in all his house, thinking about what car he could take to keep from being too noticeable. 

It had been hell of a day.

Maybe he should have been thinking about leaning a little farther forward; about how long the fall was before you hit the water. He should have been summoning up the muscle memory of the fall, of the rush of his heart beat, of the depth of the water as he sank under it. He should have been able to conjure up the _noise_ of the attack, all the concrete cracking apart at impact. How it made a slithering sound as it slid, back and down, dragging Tony and the cliff and all the things he ever owned with him. 

It felt like it should have felt like that. It felt like pressing his face against Pepper’s ducked head and holding her while she sobbed over his betrayal should have _hurt_ more. It should have _meant_ more. (Because it had finally happened, he had finally really become the man she was afraid he was, back when they were still dancing around the possibility of becoming an _us_. He’d loved her as best he could, as long as he could, and now—what?)

There was a woman in another world, doing all his dirty work for him. Her fury had gone soft; her hurt had abated. At the moment, the connection between them had never been _more_ present and all he could feel was the sensation that he should have felt _more_. But it wasn’t her.

She was on the other side, like emotional static playing over the phone. There was no distinct sound or feeling, just a general awareness that sound and feeling both existed.

This melancholy was Tony’s. This half-assed attempt at agony was the best he could manage under present conditions. It had been worse an hour or two ago, when he had kissed her hair, when he had let her wipe her face and clear her throat and thank him for his time.

(Maybe she’d be safer, farther away. Maybe he’d always thought that. He’d proven that. He could _not_ protect her. Killian had still gotten her; it hadn’t mattered how many suits he’d made.) 

The door slid open behind him, Steve stepped out with two pizza boxes balanced on one hand and a six pack of beer hanging off his other. He looked like an oversized frat boy, with his baseball hat facing the wrong way and his hopeful smile looking to score with the lucky girl he’d decided to pursue. “Hungry?” he said.

There was probably something to say here, about how beer wasn’t going to do either of them any good. It wasn’t enough to get Tony drunk (like he almost thought he wanted) and it wasn’t nearly enough to do anything to Steve at all. But he stood up straight and nodded his head. “Famished,” he said. He took the pizzas when Steve handed them to him, and led them across the balcony to the table. “I was wondering when you’d be back. I missed you.” He set the pizza on the table and turned back to take the beer.

Steve was too close to avoid, leaning against him to set the beer on the table. He smiled, “I missed you too.” His hand was cool from holding the cans, his mouth was warm and close and pressed against Tony’s.


	25. Chapter 25

# B SIDE

“I guess you can call me Nettie,” she said from across the poorly rendered sand. The beach in front of them had no visual, just the sound of water across sand and the cheerful chirp of many voices enjoying the sun. There was no cabana behind them, no friendly bartender making mixed drinks for the single and ready to mingle crowd. There was only the eight by eight foot square around their chairs, and even that was inconstant.

Nettie, if that’s what she wanted to be called, was top notch quality. Wearing a black one piece bathing suit with blue trim, she was rendered perfectly in this stupid dream of his. He hadn’t noticed before, the muscles in her arms, the scars on her hands. He hadn’t noticed how her hair curled upward or how her toenails were painted a perfectly perky pink. 

“That doesn’t seem like a name we’d like,” Tony said.

“We don’t,” Nettie said. “My Father called me Nettie when I was a child. I hated it. Obadiah used to tell me that I looked like my father, but I never saw it—I see it in you. If you and I are the same, I guess I do look like him.”

Tony was wearing swim trunks and his topographical map of scars. The puckered edges of where the arc reactor no longer was stood out from his chest like a mountain range of it’s own. He wasn’t fond of being without a shirt anymore. (Funny how he thought of this here, looking at the woman he wasn’t.) The tie was a surprise, out of place, hanging loosely from his neck. “Did you do this?”

“I don’t think I have any control here,” Nettie said. “I think you’re building this, whatever it is—I don’t know why I think that. I don’t know where I am. No,” she frowned over that, “I don’t know _when_ I am. It comes and goes. I’m here, where you are, I’m _here_ when you are but I don’t think I am. Outside of here.”

That was just confusing. That just didn’t make any sense at all. “At least I got the bathing suit right this time.” All it had cost him was the beach. 

Nettie looked down at it, ran her hand down her chest and let it fall to her thigh. “I don’t like that about you. I hate it. I’ve been in your world for three weeks and every time I think of how scared you must be I can’t stand it. I hate it.”

Tony leaned forward, twisted around so they were facing one another, a set of imperfect mirrors: his ugly bare skin, her glowing arc reactor. His hairy knees, her long crossed legs. “You’re scared. We’ve lived the same life, you and me. I know you. You’re just as scared as I am.”

Her dismissal was a flighty life, a roll of her eyes. She brushed her hair away from her forehead and it fell right back into place. “I’m not scared,” was an unbreakable wall she’d built all around herself. (Funny how easily he could see it here, how he could see the stress lines on her face, see how _tired_ she was behind all that anger. She was so fucking tired, and it was still so long until they could finally sleep.) “I’m a woman, I’m not given the right to be scared—you’ve seen my world, you’ve seen my news. Can you imagine what they’d do if they had idea? Can you imagine what all those Senators you think are jokes would say if I ever flinched? They’d take everything, they’d bring the god damn Marines, they’d take Malibu and the tower and the Avengers.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Tony said.

“Not to you. Even a traumatized, alcoholic, insomniac is a better hero than a scared woman.”

“They wouldn’t take it because they’d have to get past Steve. The whole US Military couldn’t get passed Steve.”

Nettie laughed at that, all breath and humor. “That’s the problem,” she said. “They won’t take it because of _him_. So, I’m _not_ scared. I’m _never_ scared.” Her hands were folded around her ankles, she was leaning forward, not backward, looking at him with eyes like a mirror. It was a challenge, to call her bluff, to call her a liar when there was nobody to hear it but the two of them. She said, “even if I was scared, I wouldn’t be scared of dying in outer space. I wouldn’t be scared of men from outer space coming to kill me. My fears are made of flesh and blood. I killed most of them, I think Obadiah killed the rest himself, and—” She shook it off, regained her composure. “I’m not scared _now_ just because I was then.”

“I’ve seen what’s coming,” Tony said. He leaned forward, felt the wavering barrier that separated them. “You’re an idiot if you’re not scared of that.”

Nettie shrugged. “Call me an idiot.”

# A SIDE

Tony had never managed anonymity in all her life. Long before the fervent demand for personal information of public figures, her parents had dressed her up in frilly layers and sold her picture to the men who made magazines. What a pretty picture they’d made in those long-ago days. Her Mother was glowing with pride, looking at her with soft adoration. Her hand had been resting on Tony’s chest. Howard had stood behind the scene smiling down at his wife’s head. 

She’d only made it three weeks into her life before everyone knew exactly what she looked like. But _here_ , well _here_ nobody had any idea who she was. Tony fit right in with the crowd, prompting nothing but a few side-eye glances at the sacks of apples she’d thrown into her cart. Their curiosity had nothing to do with recognition and all to do with what the fuck she planned on doing with so many god damn apples.

Well, that was simple. In a different world, there was a different man that looked very, very much like Steve Rogers. That man’s name was Steve Rogers too, and much like the Captain America everyone in this upside-down place knew and loved, he was a very stubborn man. Hell, he was the most stubborn man that she had ever met, and what a feat that was because Tony was raised by a man as stubborn as a fucking mule. 

This alternate Steve Rogers, who was stubborn, was having a bit of a problem in his world. He was suffering because he was stubborn, and confused, and _angry_. There weren’t many people or things more dangerous than a stubborn, confused and angry man. (Steve Rogers, who wasn’t here in this upside-down place to defend himself, would have objected that he was no more dangerous than she was. Because while stubborn, confused, angry Steve Rogers were dangerous, determined, angry, sad Tony Starks were _more_ dangerous.) 

Tony had a cart full of apples, and a head full of notions. She had a chest full of secrets about everything that made her husband angry and everything that made him sad. She’d been studying up on Captain America since she was a child, and she’d been learning everything about Steve Rogers since she met him in that room in New York. 

The out of place Anthony Stark was untouchable but her husband, Steve Rogers— Well she’d touched him everywhere a person could touch another person. She’d left her fingerprints on his soul and her nail marks down his back. She could get to him, by getting to upside down Steve Rogers, and once she did, maybe she could figure out _why_ the bridge existed.

In short, she was buying apples and a _lot_ apples because she was going to drive Steve Rogers crazy the best (fully PG) way she knew how. With All-American Apple Pie. (Just like her Mother used to make on the fourth of July.)

# B SIDE

Steve had grown up in a world where it was impolite to pressure a partner into sexual activities. (Maybe that was still the case, it was just the importance of politeness that had changed.) A gentleman did not pressure, or manipulate, or whine after any manner of satisfaction. No, he accepted that no meant no and sometimes that meant you went to bed thinking about how hopeless the situation was. Thinking about how all the moral abstinence they had resolved to maintain was worthless against the fact that his wife had already fucked the other Steve. Thinking how this Tony was the same height and size as his wife, and how he fit into the bed the same, and into Steve’s arms the same, and how when they were both pretending with their eyes closed, he kissed almost exactly the same as she had when they were still working it out.

Being a gentleman was waking up from promising sex dreams and excusing yourself to the bathroom to deal with the problem when all you really wanted was to roll up against the body in bed next to you, to kiss the man awake and convince him that morals didn’t matter in this case.

Morals should always matter. 

That was just harder to remember when he was masturbating in the shower. 

Tony was waking up when Steve came out of the bathroom. He hadn’t gotten up yet, just stretched in the bed with a partially conscious smile and half-opened eyes looking out the windows. He was mumbling something like: “you’re an idiot.”

“What?” Steve asked. He was between shirts, having left last nights in the hamper and not yet having found today’s. Tony drew in a waking breath, pushed himself up higher on the bed to concentrate on him. A smile rested on his face, lazy and indulgent.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Steve’s wife did that too, mumbled things while she was waking up she didn’t remember the next second. “You want breakfast?” he asked. 

“Sure.” Tony didn’t kick the blankets off, didn’t get out of bed, didn’t rush off to the bathroom to start his day. No, he leaned against the headboard while Steve sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on a fresh pair of socks. His unsure fingers ran down Steve’s back, tracing the way the muscles moved. It was a gentle, wistful, half-intended gesture. The kind of thing you did without thinking about it; the kind of thing that was driving Steve insane. “You making it?”

Steve turned half around, looked at Tony’s guiltless, sleepy face. “I offered.”

“You have an amazing body,” Tony said. Just like the trailing touch of his fingers, it was a half-thought-through sentiment, echoed by how his hand cupped around Steve’s arm, how he looked at him just like _she_ did. “That’s funny isn’t it? I always thought that. I’ve always wondered what you felt like.” His fingers moved up, not down, over the round part of Steve’s shoulder, following the line of his collarbone. Tony leaned forward as his hand slid down onto Steve’s chest. “I had this idea that you must feel like rubber, that you couldn’t be real. You’re just skin, muscle, bone—”

“I am human,” Steve said. Their faces were so close together Tony’s unruly bedhead was brushing against Steve’s face. 

“I loved Pepper,” Tony said, mostly to himself, “I _love_ her? I thought it was present tense. I loved her when I met you, I loved her when I made the Avengers. I didn’t want to give her up just for you, for the Avengers, for her own sake. I _loved_ her. I did, I _do_. It’s selfish, I’m never going to change. She’s never going to change. She’s never going to want me to be Iron Man. I’m never going to give it up. I _can’t_.”

“Can’t you?” Steve asked. The hand was sliding up to his neck down, Tony’s thumb running down the throb of Steve’s pulse. 

“Loki changed everything,” Tony said. “Loki proved that Earth is a contender, once you’re a contender—” (Well, that changed everything. Once people knew you could throw a punch, they kept coming to see how many punches you could throw. The more punches, the more threats, the faster and stronger and harder you had to fight to maintain peace. Strength invited challenge, challenge invited catastrophe. It was as basic a thought as the one that ended with Steve getting knocked down in back alleys in the nineteen forties. It was the reason men with big brains and new ideas to test built machines they thought could kill Tony, the reason she had to be faster-and-smarter-and-stronger than the whole fucking world.) 

“We beat Loki,” Steve said, “whatever else is coming, we’ll find a way to beat that too.”

Tony snorted. He leaned back and took his wandering hand with him. “That’s what he says too. We’ll beat it together or we’ll lose together. That bastard stood on a bomb as big as a city and he said, we save them all or we save nobody. You explain that to me, you explain how that math works out. It’s six hundred or six billion?”

Steve could _not_ explain that. (Even if he could understand the impulse, even if he could imagine saying the very same thing, even if he wanted it to be true. People fought harder when they could fight for something bigger than themselves, when they could fight for miracles.) Instead he just shrugged. “I can’t.” 

Tony shrugged back. “You make the eggs and meat, I’ll make pancakes when I finish my shower.”

“You don’t like my pancakes?”

“They’re too dry,” Tony said as he kicked away the blankets. He padded around the bed toward the bathroom, stopping when he was almost there to turn back and duck down to kiss Steve right on the lips. Like he’d been intending to do it the whole time. It was brief, and unsatisfying, and gone again before Steve could try to hold onto it. “You can’t be perfect at everything,” Tony said as he stepped away.

# A SIDE

Sam came along for moral support and craft service. He’d assured Steve, and Hill, that he was there as support. He was only going to keep Steve company and to make sure he didn’t do anything else stupid like punch mirrors into pieces while PA’s watched in horror. 

Hill had said, “fine, someone needs to.”

Sam had found a table of food in the backstage area that he had immediately treated as his own personal buffet. While Steve was watching the final rehearsal and listening to the endless chatter of the other performers, Sam was nibbling on lady fingers and little cheeseburgers. “Are you sure you don’t want some of this?” he asked when his plate was artfully full of a small sampling of everything on the table.

“No,” Steve said.

“Did you eat breakfast?” Sam dabbed his mouth with a napkin and smiled at one of the PA’s dressed in head to toe black that looked at him with some confusion. Either she didn’t understand why any man needed that much food on one plate or she didn’t understand who he was or why he was there. It didn’t matter to Sam, he just smiled at her face until she looked away. “I remember your new lady friend said that there’s a certain diet you should be following if you want to have optimal performance. You’re about to lift a motorcycle and three women in sparkly bathing suits over your head, that sounds like something you’d need optimal performance to do.”

“I ate breakfast,” Steve said.

Sam hummed his disbelief. It wasn’t so much calling Steve a liar outright as indicating that what he’d said was difficult to believe. They didn’t linger on the subject, Sam moved onto the next tangent, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to—I’ve dated some crazy women in my youth, but I gotta ask.” ( _Again_.) “This girl? You really saved up your virginity all this time and you just— _this girl_?”

“If you have an opinion, I’d love to hear it,” Steve said. He had a slip of paper with the final versions of his lines. He didn’t have much of a problem memorizing lines; his problem came with remembering what he was supposed to say at which point in the production. He’d found a groove on the press tour, he’d learned the steps and how to respond to the crowd. (God, and wasn’t he supposed to be past this? Wasn’t this supposed to be an unpleasant memory?) 

“You’re stupid,” Sam said.

Steve looked at Sam’s unsmiling face.

Sam shrugged. “Look, forget about all the things she’s done to attack you since she got here—which is most of what she’s done since she got here—forget that she’s married to some other version of you—forget that she’s probably crazy—this girl doesn’t care about you. At _best_ she’s using you.”

Funny how Steve knew all that, but here he was, thinking about how much he didn’t want to be _here_ and how much he would prefer to be anywhere else. If he could pick the location of anywhere else, he might as well have picked the location where she was. He might as well taken advantage of being taken advantage of while he had the chance. (He might have figured it out, if he stayed close enough to her, what it was she knew that he didn’t. What it was he thought he could learn about himself with her.) “Thanks for that, Sam.”

“Also,” was a whisper, the lean of Sam’s body against his, “ _Tony_?”

“I’m ninety six years old, Sam. I think that’s old enough to make my own choices.”

“You’re thirty and horny.”

“Boys,” interrupted the conversation in progress. It made Sam’s face take on the expression of a plastic doll, dead-eyed and smiling, even before Tony stepped into view. She was carrying a pie balanced in one hand, wearing a pretty dress with straps instead of sleeves, a neckline high enough to hide the arc reactor, covered in a spray of flowers, and a smile that promised she’d heard _everything_ worth repeating. “Everyone can hear you,” she whispered at them. Then she held out the pie so Steve either had to take it or let it fall. 

“What is it?” he asked as it landed in his hand.

“Apple,” Tony answered. She frowned at his hair and leaned forward to run her fingers through it, to fluff it into a shape she liked, and when she couldn’t quite manage it, frowned at him. “Don’t let them cut your hair again.” 

“I don’t eat apple pie,” Steve said.

“You’re Captain America,” Sam said. “It’s _apple pie_.” (There was nothing as American as apple pie.)

“My mistake,” she said with no indication that she was planning on taking the pie back. With absolutely no sincerity in her voice. She was just standing there frowning about his hair, or maybe his face, before she turned sideways and caught a PA on their way to the stage. “Excuse me, where can I find a comb?”

The PA, a kid that looked young enough to be attending high school, looked her over, trying in vain to find some kind of credentials and then looked at Steve (wearing the badge they’d given him) and back at her. “It’s down the hall,” he said. “Just follow the noise.”

“How did you get in here?” Sam asked. He was wearing a badge as well. The plastic aspect of his face didn’t really change much, either embarrassment or anger had locked his cheeks into a frozen smile. “I thought there was security at the door.”

“There is,” Tony said. She didn’t take the pie back. “Come on, lets see what we can do about this. Where’s Hill? Why isn’t she handling this? What does the costume look like?”

“A spandex onesie,” Sam said.

Steve shoved the pie against his chest so he either had to take it or drop everything. He followed Tony, Sam followed him, they all followed the noise down the hall and to the dressing rooms.

Tony got him into a makeup chair, in front of a mirror lined with bulbs, and she held his face just under his chin with one gentle hand. The other hand was gripping a comb like it was a weapon, as she regarded his face with no fondness. “Sam’s right,” she said even if they weren’t alone. Even if there were still plenty of people around to hear. “You could do better.” That didn’t seem to matter much as she set to fixing his hair into something that wasn’t quite outdated 1940’s ideals.

# B SIDE

Tony was willing to accept that the rules of this universe prohibited him from getting an arc reactor that was already made. He was even willing to concede that it most likely meant that he wasn’t supposed to build another one. (Experience had taught him that palladium did not mix well with his general health, but he put that thought on the shelf with all the rules he was ignoring.) JARVIS had figured out what he intended to build about three minutes into Tony’s second favorite song and interrupted long enough to say:

“Sir, as a reminder—”

“I don’t care, JARVIS,” Tony said.

“Sir, I must insist that—”

“I understand you must and I’m telling you that I must insist that I don’t care. I need it, I have everything to make it, I’m making it. You can tattle on me if you need to.”

“Sir.”

Tony looked up from the work table, out at the empty lab around him, wondering why he thought he might see a barely familiar red face with a very familiar voice. That was a phantom of an idea he hadn’t even fully accepted in his own world. That JARVIS had been downloaded into a host body that consumed him and left nothing but the voice behind. “Tell them Anthony Stark said that he never agreed to any rules.”

“I will make note of it,” JARVIS conceded. “But sir, I would like to remind you that the penalty for—”

“No,” Tony said. The music came back, JARVIS sulked in silence, and Tony worked. (He couldn’t be sure why; he couldn’t quite remember, but it was _important_ that he keep working. It was _important_.) 

“Sir,” JARVIS said ten minutes later.

“For the love of—”

“Ms. Romanoff is calling for you, Sir,” JARVIS said.

Well that was different. Tony picked up a shop rag to throw over his half-built arc reactor and slid the chair sideways to get a good view of Natasha’s face patiently waiting for him to answer the phone. He watched her placid blinking, (like trying to figure out what exactly she could want, and whether or not JARVIS had actually tattled on him) before he said, “answer it.”

Recognition sparked a smile on Natasha’s face, as friendly and formal as a handshake. “Good afternoon.”

“Morning,” Tony corrected.

“Afternoon here,” Natasha said. She cleared her throat, looked at all four corners of the screen without leaning in to try to see more than was available. “Is Steve there?”

“No,” he was somewhere else. Maybe the field of dreams, maybe for a run, maybe jacking off in the bathroom, maybe making a five course lunch for them to share by a warm fire—it was impossible to tell where Steve might have been. “Just me.”

“Good,” Natasha shifted the screen to show an entire table of familiar Avengers’ faces. There was a holographic map in the center in the middle of them, a trail of red and a highlighted area where their target must have been. “I was hoping he wouldn’t be there.” (Why, Tony barely had the time to think.) “I don’t think he’d be very happy with what I’m about to suggest. We have approximately located Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, for obvious reasons, we have been having some trouble drawing them out. We have flooded the Sokovian airwaves with coverage on the takedown of the last HYDRA base and sent in several operatives to leak the information that Dr. List and his team were most likely experimenting with Loki’s stolen scepter. Our thinking was—”

“They would realize on their own that they’d been lied to,” Tony finished.

“Yes,” Natasha agreed.

Bruce leaned in across the table, “I’ve been tracking them using the faint energy signature they share with the scepter but it’s not precise enough to give us an exact location and sometimes the energy lingers in places they aren’t anymore.”

“What do you want me to do?” Tony asked. “Play the bait?”

Natasha tipped the screen back so it was focused on her. “Yes.” (There was something to be said about honesty.) “It’s not my favorite plan, but thus far its our best plan. I know that you have history with your Wanda, and I don’t know what that history is, but this is something we would bring to her as a plan, so I thought—”

“I think she might notice I’m not the Tony she’s looking for.”

“We were thinking about spreading the rumor that the Avengers were returning to the tower, that Tony Stark would specifically be at the castle this time. You fly in with the suit, you draw her out and we’ll be there to—” (Capture them.)

“How?” Tony asked. “We have no viable solutions for containing Wanda’s powers in our world—we have no idea exactly how she uses them or the extent of them. How are you going to capture her? Ask her really nicely if she’ll put the handcuffs on?”

Behind Natasha, heads were turning to look at one another, trading glances and shrugs and nods, like they’d all had this argument themselves over and over again. But Natasha just looked back at him with one eyebrow raised and a great deal of expectation rolling through the screen. “Well,” she said, “generally when we are faced with this sort of dilemma there is a member of our team that is not only a genius, but an extremely creative genius and she kind of comes up with something.”

So, he was the bait and the brains. Tony shook his head, leaned back into the seat and looked sideways toward Dum-E pitifully attempting to sweep a patch of the floor that was already clean. (It was good for him to keep trying though. It kept him young.) “Steve isn’t going to like this at all.”

“I’m not asking Steve,” Natasha said. “I’m asking you if you’d like a chance to rewrite your own history.”

That was very good. Natasha was always very good at getting what she wanted. It was almost the right way to twist the knife in his gut, almost the right thing to say. Except she expected that maybe he had some bad dreams, and maybe he made a few minor mistakes. She had no idea that he’d held to build an AI that had made Sokovia a crater. She was guessing he wanted to right the wrongs he’d done with no way to know that this wouldn’t change a fucking thing for him. 

(But he had to keep going forward. He had to keep looking.)

“Bruce stays home,” Tony said.

“Done,” Natasha promised. “So, should I expect you in New York tomorrow?”

Tony snorted and nodded his head. “Steve too,” he motioned over his shoulder at the nowhere specific Steve probably was. The man wasn’t going to like this as soon as he heard it. (He was going to have palpitations, he was going to have a conniption, he was going to just _explode_ as soon as he heard it.) 

Natasha smiled. “Great. Bring a suit that she built, I’ll give you a few arc reactors to test whatever you’re probably building over there. Also,” she said more privately, “you’ve really upset JARVIS. He doesn’t understand why you’ve changed your named, maybe talk to him.”

As far as Tony was concerned, if JARVIS hadn’t already figured out he wasn’t the same as the woman he usually was there was no chance he’d ever figure it out. Somethings just worth taking the time to fight over. “Sure thing, boss,” Tony said.

As soon as the call was closed, and Tony was alone in the lab (with nothing but an echo of all his bad choices, chasing around and around the interior of his skull), he slid the chair sideways, back to the half-built arc reactor. “I can’t believe you tattled on me, buddy.”

“You did say that I could, sir.”

“I thought we had something special.”

“I bet you say that to everyone, sir,” JARVIS said.

Tony smirked to himself and went back to work.

# A SIDE

Howard had compulsively collected Captain America memorabilia. He’d collected the cards, the tin lunch boxes, the toys, the magazines— He’d bought one of anything that slapped Cap’s face on it. He’d bought every biography. He’d rounded up ‘this belonged to him’ trinkets and bits and bobs that he found at auctions. It was as if he had an idea stuck in his head, that if he gathered enough useless scraps of Steve’s public persona, he might be able to resurrect the man himself.

Howard was murdered by a dark roadside by Steve’s childhood best friend. Tony had given everything her father had bought to the first museum that seemed even remotely interested in curating the useless collection. All of Howard’s trinkets had been useless, all his fruitless searching had been wasted. (But it was fun, now and again, to drag Steve through the exhibit at the Smithsonian. To ask him questions about whether he really had worn a certain uniform, if that really was his watch, if he really had fallen off that staircase in France.) 

Howard had more money than sense, that was the only reason he’d gotten his hands on original costume, the one that some senator had commissioned the day Erskine had been shot. The Smithsonian considered it the crown jewel in their collection. While most of the costumes and shields and weapons were replicas, this ridiculous bit of fabric stretched over a specially-ordered mannequin was the real thing. Steve Roger’s sweaty body had once been trapped in the unforgiving confines of that hideous costume. (Tights and all.)

Her husband had once offered her anything she could think of in exchange for taking back that costume and burning it. He hated it more than the trading cards, more than the photographs, more than the biographies, more than any other aspect of the public consumption of his life. He hated that costume.

(“Why?” she’d asked him once, when she was wearing a shirt with no sleeves, trying to fix a generator that wouldn’t cooperate. Steve had been dressed in full gear, holding the shield over her head like it could do something to stop the downpour of rain around them. (He’d asked her why she didn’t just wear the Iron Man suit, and she’d told him this was a person job, not a hero job, and he’d _sighed_.) “Why do you want to destroy it?”

Steve was fond of linear conversations, ones that had starts and ends and logical progression. He was adapting to her method of madness, bringing up lukewarm memories of last month’s arguments. “It’s—” (she couldn’t look at his face, but she wished she had, to see him working out how he wanted to say what he was thinking), “Embarrassing? It’s like your baby pictures. I didn’t want to be that person.”

Tony was soaked through all her clothes, sitting back to look up at him, at the stars and stripes all over his uniform. “This is just a darker blue,” she said.

“It’s tactical,” Steve countered. “I’m a soldier. I’m not a showgirl.”

Tony stood up, kicked the generator and smiled when it buzzed to full life. Not so far away, the lights came back and the huddled, miserable, quiet mass of bodies let out a group exclamation of joy. If they had bothered to listen, they might have heard Bruce and Clint calling people back to the food line. Tony had been shaking her head at her husband, “even if we burned it, they’d make another one.”

“I don’t want to be remembered as that person,” Steve said. “Naïve, and stupid. I was pretending to be what I wanted to be, and I thought it was the same thing. Why would anyone want to remember that?”)

Standing to the side of the busy stage, watching the real showgirls prance around in their pretty silver heels, all she could think of was how Steve looked at that stupid costume through the glass. With her arms wrapped around her chest, and the world narrowing down to watching Steve’s bright red boots stop on every mark on the stage, it was _impossible_ to steel herself against the twist of sympathy. 

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Sam said. He was close by necessity, looking out through the curtains to watch the spectacle unfold. There were monitors nearby, showing the playback but it wasn’t in the same brilliant living colors as the stage. They didn’t do the loudness of Steve’s lines justice. They didn’t capture the way he squared his shoulders, how he stepped forward with the kind of purpose he only used to _inspire_. 

Steve hated being a mascot but he was damn fucking good mascot. He could reach right into every man and woman with a yearning for purpose. Steve had an honest face, and an honest voice, and he really, really meant it when he said, _join me, join my fight, you give your everything and I’ll give mine and we’ll defeat anything we go up against._

“You don’t think so?” Tony mumbled back.

“Oh, I know you have no idea what you’re doing.” Sam sighed. “Since you aren’t going anywhere, and you’ve got him right where you want him, why don’t you do something helpful?”

(She hoped her husband would forgive her, eventually, hoped he’d understand, that as infuriating as he was, this man was still _Steve_ , young and unsure and _lonesome_. This was still her husband, still capable of the same things, still made of the same stuff, just wandering in the dark, looking for— It was impossible to watch him make an idiot of himself, impossible to look away.) “What can I help you with, Sam?” she asked.

“I remember you saying something about you being the leader of the team, something about a functioning unit. I don’t know Tony Stark very well, I’ve only met the guy a few times, but I know that he’d do whatever he could for this team.”

There was no arguing that point. This Tony Stark would have ripped his heart out and given it to the team if he thought it would help. It didn’t matter to him what they deserved of him, or what he shouldn’t have to give. He’d give it all, and then some, and then he’d find a way to give more. “We’re friends in my world,” she said. “Steve wanted us to be friends.”

“I get this feeling, my Steve isn’t going to get what he wants out of this arrangement,” Sam said. “So, I’d settle for being allies while you’re here. You could help us, maybe we could help you.”

No, they couldn’t. Mr. Stark had built a bridge all by himself, he’d found a way to get to her when she couldn’t see anything. She was adding bricks to a structure in progress, hoping they were going the right way. She didn’t need anyone by Steve for that. “Sure,” she said. “For Steve.”

# B SIDE

Catching Tony working was like searching for a unicorn. (That was analogy she’d made herself, just before she giggled something about only virgins being able to do it. Back when the funniest thing in the world to her was how sexually inexperienced he was.) For a woman that worked _constantly_ , she was never seen _working_ on anything. He caught her lounging in her lab. He’d seen her eating snacks at her desk. 

Steve had watched Tony fight countless times. He’d watched her do field repair so often he was starting to understand the basic mechanics of most machines. (At very least, he was starting to understand which part needed to be smacked and which part needed to be treated delicately.) 

He very rarely saw her like this, like this Tony was right now. Sitting on the floor of he lab, with a small screwdriver clenched between his teeth and a larger one gripped in his hand. There was a pile of suit parts around him. The music that must have been playing and come to a stopping point, where the record was spinning static, but it hadn’t come to a stop. There was sweat in Tony’s hair, sliding down his grimacing face. There was blood on one of his knuckles and grease in odd dabs and streaks up his arms. 

“Were you just going to watch,” Tony asked. He opened his mouth far enough to let the little screwdriver fall out and lifted the suit piece he was working up to peer inside of it. He blew a cloud of air and wiped at something with his finger before nodding at it with approval. “I wouldn’t think Steve Rogers would be into voyeurism.”

“That’s the thing where you watch your wife make out with another woman?” Steve asked. He pulled a stool out from under a work station and sat on it. “Because if it is, I’m not. I think she is.”

“She wants to watch you make out with another woman?”

“No.” (In fact, his wife would be just as happy to strangle a woman as she would be to let one touch him in any overtly sexual way. It had come up in conversation, when she was frowning over his fans always rubbing their hands on his chest in photographs. He _did_ notice how fond strangers were of touching him when they could, but he tried not to let it bother him. His wife called them horny bitches.) “Other men.”

“Oh,” Tony said. He set down the piece he’d been working on in his lap and cleared his throat. “Well, that’s convenient.”

“Right now,” he said, “it’s less convenient when she’s trying to engineer a reason for me to have sex with Thor. If he wasn’t dating Jane Foster.” (They had laughed about it once or twice, how Thor could probably be convinced the easiest out of all of them. How he wouldn’t have made it a big deal, because a man who measured his lifetime in centuries wasn’t going to get hung up on one-night stands. Most likely.) “Don’t laugh.”

“I wouldn’t,” was a lie, like the pink smile on his face. “Do you want to have sex with Thor? Because if that’s where you’re setting the bar…”

Steve shrugged. “I’m not usually thinking about having sex with him? I don’t think I’m attracted to him?”

Tony hummed, leaned over to drop the screwdriver into the toolbox and straightened his legs out so he could rub his thigh. “It’s the blond hair.”

It wasn’t; but his wife had said the same thing. Steve had a type, a very set, very specific, very narrow type. It was dark-haired. Angry. Beautiful. He had fallen head over heels for Bucky. He’d loved Peggy with all his young man’s heart and he loved Tony Stark more than he thought any man could love anyone. That was what they had in common, dark hair, anger and beauty. None of them willing to go down without a fight. “Must be,” he agreed. “What are you working on?”

“The Autonomous Prehensile Propulsion Suit.” Tony lifted his arm, made a motion with his hand and pulled it back toward his chest. All the pieces of the suit started to glow and vibrate in place. They were gearing up to really start moving before they sputtered and went still. “It’s the propulsion part I’m working on. I had this,” he said. “I definitely had this. The suit had its problems, but it could _propel_ itself.” 

“How many suits have you built? In total?”

“I started a file for the Mark 46 before this.” He lifted his leg far enough to dig the little screwdriver out and tossed it over into the toolbox. “Natasha called me today. The Avengers want me to help them with Wanda.”

Of course, they did. Why would Natasha care much about what facing up to the woman who could make nightmares as vivid as reality when she hadn’t cared much about suggesting that Tony seduce Steve. (It wasn’t the seduction, it was what seducing Steve cost Tony.) Tony was _finally_ improving, finally becoming something more than a shadow, finally showing any sign that he could _recover_. That must have been why Natasha called, that must have been why she’d waited so long to ask. “Is that something you want to do?”

“What else am I going to do?” Tony asked. “Stay here, pretend to be your wife—wait until—” Tony shrugged, like it didn’t matter. He was _accepting_ the inevitable, in a way that she never had. 

“You’re not pretending to be my wife,” Steve said. “Whatever this is, whatever happens between us—you’re not my wife. You’re you. I’m me. Whatever we do is between us, I’m not pretending otherwise.”

“I don’t know if that’s supposed to make it better or worse,” Tony said. But he didn’t seem to want to waste too much time talking about it. “Its selfish to ask, but I’d rather not do this alone.” (There was no way the other Avengers had asked him to either. Whatever plan Natasha and the team had come up with, it most definitely wouldn’t have involved Tony facing Wanda alone.) “I’ll watch your back if you watch mine?”

“I’m not an active member of the Avengers,” Steve recited. (Because he’d read all the rules, he’d helped to write them, he knew all of them and understood who they were protecting. He’d promised he’d follow them to the best of his ability.) 

Tony rolled his eyes at that. “When exactly have you ever let that stop you?” (What a man Steve Rogers must have been in his world, breaking every rule he didn’t agree with, doing whatever he wanted when it could be considered _for the greater good_.) 

Steve nodded though. “Of course I’ll be there.”

# A SIDE

Steve had never perfected the art of signing autographs. It wasn’t scribbling his name that had alluded him, but how he was supposed to react to the mob of people that were willing to wait, or scream, shove or coerce their way into getting the chance to see him. This modern madness didn’t match up to his memory of endless line of women with babies pretending they were more than photo ops. 

Steve would take scribbling his name on any paper, person or picture over being handled an unhappy infant and being expected to look happy about it. The lobby was full of people looking for photographs (and when had this become a part of the evening he’d agreed to? When had it been decided he’d keep the stupid suit on and stand in front of a paper background and let anyone with a camera phone take a photo with him?). He had given up trying to count them, and trying to escape, around the time a line had formed in the chaos. 

About the time someone in management had called for ropes and employees to corral the chaos, Steve had resigned himself to the inevitable fate. He’d fixed his smile. He’d kept all his talk small. He answered no questions. He’d done his best to not let too many people touch him longer than necessary.

It felt like it would have gone on and on and on forever, one interchangeable person with the next, until it was Tony standing there looking at him with pity and poor humor. She thanked the man that told her it was her turn. “Come on, Rogers. You’re halfway there.”

Steve lifted his arm to wrap it around her shoulders. “Only halfway?”

“I think some people are getting back in line.” She put her arm around his back, turned her body so she was looking at him just like all the adoring fans did. She made it look convincing, like she wasn’t the very same woman that had broken his arm, like she hadn’t hit him until he passed out, like she hadn’t dragged him to the—

No, that was an inappropriate thought for a public space. As inappropriate as how warm her body was, and how close, and how nice she smelled. “Are you leaving?”

“And miss the chance to watch you suffer?”

The camera flash startled him, but Tony’s smile never faltered. She slid away from him to take the phone from the woman that had started taking the photos. She disappeared into the milling crowd comparing their photographs. Steve turned his attention to the next one in line.

It went on-and on and _on_.

By the time they started packing up the velvet ropes and sweeping up the floor, Steve had given up the pretense of energy and composure. He was sitting on a bench around the corner from the prop background, thinking uncharitable thoughts about participating in the charity. There were pockets of conversation around him, shop talk about cleaning up and shutting down the venue, encouraging pats on the back about what a good show they’d put on, half shouted declaration that after-party snacks would need to be gotten. 

Steve was daydreaming of a quiet place and the comfort of real clothes. (They had not, at least, given up a toy shield to hold, and he could be thankful for that.) He was working his way around his bitterness, trying to talk himself into feeling good about having done a good thing, and failing.

Tony stepped right into his downcast line of sight. The background of her dress was a pale blue, just a touch of green in it, but the flowers were bright spots. They were detailed petals on fragile stems, repeated over and over and over all over the dress. He reached out to pinch his finger around one of them, rolled the fabric under his thumb like he had any right at all to touch her clothes. “You did a good thing, Steve.”

That meant something coming from the president of the Anti-Steve-Rogers club. He leaned back when he looked up at her face. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Not sure it counts if I didn’t do it for the right reasons.”

“Oh,” was false pity, “you did it for the right reasons. That doesn’t always feel good. Come on, get up, get changed. You can’t go anywhere dressed like that.”

The lobby was almost empty, nearly out of eyes and ears that might be paying attention. Steve stood up, but Tony didn’t step back to give him an inch of space. That left them close enough to invite an intimacy that wasn’t real. Close enough that a tired man (like he was) might get misleading ideas about how close was close enough, or too close. She was looking right at him, right at his face, not staring at him like something she could barely stand to see, but—

Steve tipped his head, ducked low enough to kiss her. 

(Because why not. He’d made a fool of himself every other way today, why not this way too?)

Her hand on his face was cool, not smooth, just resting there. Her breath was a sigh against his cheek just before she pressed back into the kiss. His hand touched her waist and hers landed on his arm. They were kissing like almost strangers, working out how they wanted to proceed.

In a lobby.

Wearing costumes like real clothes.

Pretending they were anything but what they were.

Steve pulled away first. “I should change.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “I should probably let you go. Sam’s waiting. I’ll see you,” she promised. Her hands lingered, pulled away slowly, “I’ll see you,” she repeated.


	26. Chapter 26

# A SIDE

“I’ll see you,” she’d said in the lobby of the charity event. Tony had meant, tomorrow (or the next day) or maybe a few days from then. She’d meant _later_ to be measured by days not hours. At least, she’d thought she’d meant that.

But that was before Steve Rogers invited himself to the tower, before he found her in the kitchen staring at the uncut apple pie, thinking about indulging in a slice of it. She was a fan of hot apple pie and cold vanilla ice cream. It seemed like the least she could do to treat herself after she’d spent the whole morning making the pies. The least she could do after she’d spent her whole afternoon and evening watching Steve Rogers convince himself that it was selfish to have feelings.

“Captain Rogers is approaching,” FRIDAY announced.

Apple pie was one thing; but it wouldn’t hit the spot. Whatever the other Tony had opened up in her chest wasn’t going to be assuaged by sweet desserts and well-formed plans. This thing she was carrying was _heavy_ and _hot_ and _lonely_. It was screaming all the time from the very center of her body, just _screaming_ for some relief.

(Tony did remember that feeling, the way inertia seemed to pull her into Steve’s orbit time-and-time-and-time again. Tony Starks were miserable persons, raised rich and privileged but still unsatisfied, always reaching and searching and _wanting_. Steve was imperfect, but perfect for her. Steve was solid and real, and present. He was the solace her body had craved. Falling in love with that was like drowning, and the idiot sleeping in her husband’s bed wasn’t giving in. He was determined to fight it.)

“Hi,” Steve Rogers said to her, wearing his real-person’s clothes, not quite blushing but not quite ready to admit why he’d gone off and invited himself over. She should have mocked him for his presumptuousness. (And she should have slapped his hand in that lobby, for reaching out and touching her clothes without asking.) But there he was, trying to find the same thing she was. Just looking for a way to make the day bearable.

Tony reached under her left arm to pull the zipper of the dress down, shook her shoulders so the skinny straps fell. There was Steve Rogers looking like he was going to forget how to breath, rubbing one of his fists into his palm as he watched the dress drop to the floor. “Let’s make it to the bed this time,” she said.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. He was delightfully, guilelessly helpless against her. (He wouldn’t always be, he just lacked the experience to know what he liked, and how he liked it.) He let her loop her arms around his shoulders, let her drag him down, let her kiss him even if he knew (and she knew, and Sam knew) that this was going to end in disaster. Steve’s hands slid down her back as her tongue slid into his mouth. He hummed something low and encouraging as his hands folded around her upper thighs to lift her whole body right off the ground. 

He carried her to bed (like a good barbarian) and she worked on his shirt buttons while he worked on his pants. The two of them reduced him to bare skin in a matter of minutes. If he were her husband, they would have the pretense of finesse, of patience, of love. 

Steve kissed her the way she kissed him: like they were starving. His hands touched her like searching for an answer. She couldn’t touch him without familiarity; she couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t been here before. That she hadn’t made a habit of letting Steve Rogers crawl right on top of her, of sighing to herself when he kissed her neck. He was identical to her husband, absolutely indistinguishable beneath her hands. 

Lit up by nothing but the light coming through the open bathroom door, Steve was angelic. He was perfect, stilling to a full stop with one of his hands lifting away from its curious exploration of her breast to rest against the bed instead. He was holding himself up just above touching, watching her face with _concern_ , whispering, “we don’t have to do this if it upsets you.”

Tony rested her hands on his face, ran her thumb down his nose. (God and now he sounded like her husband, always reminding her of all her options.) She smiled (and wondered when all those tears had gathered up in her eyes). There was nothing she could say that would be convincing enough to make it _true_ , that she did want this. (No, there were things to say, just not the voice to say them. Not the tone and the strength to say them without crying. I do want this, I want it because I hurt, because it makes me feel better, because it feels good, because I do and—) Tony kissed him instead, pulled him down until their bodies were rubbing together, until it was his skin and her skin and nothing between. He kissed her like a slow start, working up to accepting. 

She pushed his hand down between them, under the stretchy band of her panties and smiled at the way he gasped when his fingers felt how wet she was. “You sound just like him,” she said into his hair as he tipped his head down to watch her teach him how to touch a woman.

# B SIDE

“It’s hard to fall asleep next a man who’s not sleeping.”

Steve wasn’t awake to avoid nightmares, though the resurgence of nightmares felt _inevitable_. The team had made the right choice, to find and try to apprehend Wanda. The team existed for that exact purpose, to fight the battles that others couldn’t. Wanda Maximoff seemed like she must have been a whole fucking war contained in a single person, a caged scream with unknown potential. The team had done its best, it had found the limit of its abilities and it had reached out to an expert.

This Tony Stark was an expert. This Tony Stark, this one right here next to him, right this second rolling onto his back. “Are we not going to talk about it?”

No, they weren’t. Steve and his wife had reached a compromise without every having discussed it first. Steve could feel protective. Steve could protect her, but he couldn’t tell her about it. He couldn’t say that events like this made him _angry_. He couldn’t explain to her how it felt _unnecessary_ that Tony had to be put into harm’s way, that he was being sent out to face up to a woman that—

What?

A woman that Tony (this Tony, from another place) had already faced. One that had stirred up his brain and left him struggling. 

A woman that was capable of scrambling Steve’s brains to bits. The woman that had gifted him with the unwanted nightmare of killing his wife. The repeating, unending visual of her limp and lifeless body laying against his. The realization that he _was_ capable of it; that it wasn’t far-fetched, that it wasn’t unbelievable. 

Steve wasn’t going to talk about how he didn’t want Tony to go, to make prototypes that couldn’t be tested. To go to Sokovia and put himself into harm’s way. 

No, no, because that would start another argument about whether or not Steve thought Tony was his equal or not. (God, and why was that always his wife’s first thought. Did Steve view her as an equal, as if she were the lesser, as if all her genius, and all her ability, were _inferior_ because he could run fast, and forever?) 

“I’m sorry I kept you awake,” he said.

Tony was quiet to his right, absorbing the words and the dark around them. He shifted a little, pulled the blanket from where it had gotten caught under Steve’s. “She asked me if I wanted the chance to rewrite my history.”

“Natasha?” 

Tony must have nodded. “I can’t rewrite my history. I can’t undo what I did, I don’t think there’s anything I _can_ do to even—to even begin to atone for it. How does anyone prove they’re sorry for what I did?” He sighed, went quiet, lingered in stillness. “Its not my history that I’m writing here. It can’t be my history because I don’t exist here. I’m just trying to do better, to do something worthy of what she would do, if she were here.”

That was a dangerous line of thought. Tony had developed a habit of trying to be larger than life. She had made herself mythological, the protector and defender of the world, of the Avengers, of the people she loved. She’d built them a fortress, an intricate, nearly indestructible network of defenses that would protect them as long as they abided by the guidelines. The rules were simple:

Tony was always the leader. (She always took the blame, absorbed it up through every layer of the Avengers, collected and hoarded it like a dragon on a pile of gold.) 

Steve was a good back up, able to stand in front of a camera wearing stars-and-stripes, inciting patriotic fervor in every American heart, saying how they’d done their best, and they weren’t going to rest until everything that could be done for the survivors was done.

You filed the paperwork, you checked the right boxes, you submitted your reports and you clocked out at the end of your shift.

Tony owned the suits, the names, the brands, the weapons and the _shield_. She’d fought the United States Government for the right to own Steve’s stage name, and she’d fought them again to take final possession of the shield. Like a wizard with a time turner, she’d produced enough paperwork to prove that Howard fucking Stark had developed the shield on his own time, with his own resources, out of his own scientific curiosity and that he had loaned it to Steve. That was the bit that rankled him, that Howard had _loaned_ it to Steve. Tony needed to own the shield to protect the shield. 

Steve wasn’t allowed to tell her that he didn’t like the physical danger she was putting herself in; Tony had no problem telling him that she hated the non-physical danger he put himself in. (You’re an international war criminal in the making, Steve. You’re one step away from becoming the most wanted man in the world. You’re exhausting.)

Tony’s network covered the planet, she ran campaigns on every continent, she employed satellite offices, she hired lobbyists in every government. Like a virus, she had infected the whole damn world, all so she could stand in front of a panel of senators, smiling right at their faces, telling them if they didn’t like the Avengers setting up camp on American soil she could take them anywhere else on the planet.

“Tony’s never faced Wanda,” Steve said. “None of us know what she’d do, none of us will ever know. You can’t compare yourself with something that doesn’t exist.” 

“I can make logical predictions.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but he didn’t argue the point instead he turned to look down at Tony, “you want to go watch a movie?”

“Sure.”

# A SIDE

Morning brought the morning news, (and morning wood, and the fresh realization that should he keep falling asleep with this woman, he might keep waking up naked). Steve was watching it from bed, with the covers pooled in his naked lap, listening to the commentary of the early morning types. 

“If you are just tuning in we were discussing the Sokovia Relief charity event—and guys, I’ve got to say that I thought charity events like this were a thing of the past. You know we’ve seen the rise of internet, the popularity of raising charitable contributions through internet campaigns. I know there’s a series of small screen videos, published on youtube and sites such as that—but guys.”

And here, everyone exchanged a knowing sort of glance. The sort of look that Bucky had spent half their young adult years trying to trade with him; that one that conveyed the full depth of the sweaty, damp, glorious mess that sex was without every having to say a word. It was a visual, _I definitely want to fuck that_ that seemed to pass between all parties with perfect understanding. (Except him, when Steve was young, and embarrassed for (and by) Bucky, the only thing that look had meant to him was walking home alone again.) 

“We need to talk about Captain America.” The Look became a grin, it caught like a wildfire, spreading across every face on the camera, “we need to talk about that _costume_.”

“I think,” the stick in the mud to the left said, “that it’s really admirable, that it’s really exceptional that a man who has such an important job, that must have just so many things to be doing—”

Tony was sharing the blanket with him, doing a perfect job of posing as a sleeping person until her arm slid up onto his leg. She didn’t seem intent on doing anything but that, just resting her hand there as she drew in a breath and stretched under the blankets. Her hair was a disaster across the pillow, pulled up into peaks and twisted into curls. Her cheek was pink from sleeping too hard, and she narrowed her eyes with suspicious distaste at the light coming from the TV. “It has to be too early for this shit,” she mumbled. 

“I don’t sleep a lot.”

Tony moved her hand away, rolled half way onto her back so she was propped up by one elbow with the blanket slipping down off her chest. She was as naked as he was, made of mortal skin that had divot scars. The arc reactor was a steady humming blue light, lighting up the dim shadows around the bed. “Well,” she said as they replayed clips of the performance, of him on stage with the camera doing it’s best to catch his most flattering angles. “It’s a change from what they have been saying.”

“The weatherman said I should wear spandex all the time,” Steve said. 

“Mmm.” Tony collapsed back against the pillows, looked up at him without pity, “it must suck to be objectified.” She said it the same way Peggy sighed whenever he complained about wearing tights, the way she just shook his head without saying outright that she was wearing tights-and-heels and still waiting to be taken seriously. “You know,” she said as she kicked the blanket, so she could free one of her legs, “I haven’t done a photoshoot wearing a dress since I was a child. I even had one photographer refuse to take my picture because I wouldn’t dress more _femininely_. Sports Illustrated asked me to wear a bikini for them.”

“You were wearing a dress yesterday.”

“Well,” she looked up at him, like she was going to impart an important, _impactful_ truth to him, “I wore a dress to my wedding too, because I’ve yet to meet a Steve Rogers that can’t be distracted by a flirty skirt and some bare shoulders.” 

It should have been more offensive to have no secrets; even if she hadn’t learned his from him. He might have been more offended if she wasn’t proving her exact point by doing nothing by laying in bed, distracting him away from being angry and offended all at once. “How is this supposed to change anything—I mean, in the long run?”

The TV was playing another clip of him walking across the stage. Without commentary, it was just the swelling of the patriotic music and the girls finishing a line of their song. He came to a stop like they’d told him to, looking out toward the stage lights like he could see an audience (he hadn’t wanted to see)—

“It changes a lot. You’re a person again. Yeah, you look a bit ridiculous and yes, they’re going to laugh at you. They’re going to make a joke out of it. They’re going to talk about how nice your ass looks in those pants. You’ve got a nice ass, Steve. The American people appreciate a good ass—”

“And that’s it?”

Tony groaned as she pushed herself up to sitting. She leaned in against his body, all warm skin and soft breasts and the hard metal of the arc reactor. She said, “I broke your arm,” as she lifted his hand up to press against her breast. “I’ve been working to undermine you since the moment we met.” Her fingers folded across his, encouraging him to tighten his grip, to feel how her nipple got hard when he touched it. “Don’t underestimate the importance of the animal brain, Steven.”

“So, Sam’s right about you?” That didn’t seem to matter to his hands, to his body as it shifted so she could lean against his chest. It didn’t matter to his right arm slipping around her back. It didn’t matter at all to the hopeful, purposeful curl of warmth gathering up in the bottom of his gut. 

Tony’s hand slid down to grip his wrist, she smiled at him with something like regret. “I like your body, it reminds me of someone I love. You like mine. I don’t plan on staying here, I don’t _want_ to stay here. But I’m stuck for now, and if you, if _this_ can make it suck less? Why not?”

Why not indeed. Steve looked back at the TV, at the table full of laughs at his expense. There were no photos of the crater that had replaced Sokovia, no mention of the displaced, of the broken families, just a feeling of success and a large sum of money for a relief fund. 

_Why not_?

# B SIDE

Tony had fallen asleep with Steve’s fingers idly combing through his hair. The TV had been playing something black and white, another movie from the long list of missed media that Steve was trying to catch up on. The couch had been warm and welcoming, the pillows that Tony had dragged downstairs had provided a buffer between his face and Steve’s lap. (For his sake, and nobody else’s, to say that he hadn’t rested his cheek on Steve Rogers’ thigh and taken a nap.) 

“Don’t stay up all night,” was the last thing he’d said before he let exhaustion take him under. Steve hadn’t answered, except to keep threading his fingers through Tony’s hair. 

(It made him homesick, that’s what it did, it made him ache for that sort of familiarity in his touches. For Pepper’s fingers twisting the hair at the base of his neck into ringlets. For Rhodey’s arm around his shoulders. For Happy—well, Happy didn’t touch him unless he had to, unless he was _protecting_ Tony somehow.) 

He didn’t wake up at the beach, or into a nightmare, but back into the same place. He woke up to the easy slant of morning light, the distant sound of JARVIS answering a question and the familiar tune of Pepper’s heels across his floor. Tony stretched on the couch that had been worn him by his body (and maybe, this version of this couch, by Steve’s body) and found the blanket tucked in all around him. 

“It’s ten,” Pepper said by way of greeting. She was all business, carrying her tablet in one hand, looking at him with harmful fondness. 

“I own the plane,” Tony mumbled. He didn’t kick away the blankets, he didn’t hurry to his feet. He didn’t rush to wakefulness. He luxuriated in the moment, the uniquely unusualness of this moment. Like an echo of a time that didn’t exist anymore, he wallowed in the fragile sense of safety. 

Funny how he hadn’t taken the time to really appreciate it before now. Maybe this was how she woke up here, warm and content, taking her time enjoying the heat of the blankets and the knowledge that everything she loved was close-by. She’d defeated every enemy that she’d come up against, she’d prevented catastrophes that her wildest dreams maybe couldn’t even have invented.

Tony was _safe_ right here on this couch. He could call Natasha back, he could tell her that Wanda was no business of his. He could go to the lab, he could fill Ms. Stark’s empty files up with all his ideas, he could build the legion, reprogram the house party protocol. He could create until he was wrung dry for the _sake_ of it. 

Steve wouldn’t even tell him not to. But Steve would go to New York with or without him. Steve was a soldier, was an Avenger, was never going to walk away from any fight. It didn’t even have to be his fight as long as it promised to be a good one.

“Actually,” Pepper said. “It’s not. It’s her plane.” 

“Him, her, those are just pronouns.” He sat up then, threw the blanket back and rubbed his hands through his ruffled up hair. “I’m Tony Stark. The plane belongs to me—where’s Steve?”

“He’s meeting you at the plane,” she said. Then, as if he needed further prompting to lift his ass off the couch, she added, “I took the liberty of packing your things.” (Since you didn’t.) If this had been his Pepper, she would have been exasperated with him, she would have been arms over her chest, frowning at him for not getting up, for not moving faster, for making them late. It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t his, it was just how things changed when you redefined your relationship. 

Pepper was running a company with his name on it, she was keeping up his image out of habit, and she was looking after him the way a girlfriend looked after a boyfriend. He was doing his best, balancing his civil life with his superhero one with his personal one. The effort had to get exhausting.

“How is she?” he asked without moving.

Pepper sighed, shrugged, “I don’t know. If it were me, and it’s _not_ , because I’ve never dated you because I’m not blind, I know _you_ , I would be keeping myself busy. I would be working, because I know to expect out of work. I wouldn’t be waiting for your phone call, I wouldn’t want your explanations.”

Well, it was best that nobody was waiting for explanations he didn’t have. (You see, Pepper, what happened was, I woke up in another man’s bed, in the place of another man’s wife, and I was just trying to get home, Pepper. I was just trying to get home.) “I wouldn’t call,” he said.

Pepper smiled, because she had promised to forgive him, “I know. You should. When you get back there—even if you,” (fuck Steve), “you should call. You should tell her that you’re sorry.” But then she was done with that, folding it up and putting it away. “Happy is going to drive you.” 

Tony got to his feet. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Pepper said when he was close enough they could have been bumping shoulders as he passed through the doorway she was standing in. “I hope I don’t see you again. I hope you get home.” (I hope _she_ gets home.) Then she kissed his cheek and turned with him, ushering him through the house and to the door where Happy was waiting by the car. 

Here’s your hat and what’s your hurry, sir? 

“Thank you, Ms. Potts,” he said, because she at least was kind enough to not shove him into the car.

# A SIDE

Steve regarded the pies on the counter like a full assault from a hostile enemy. He had managed to find a pair of a pants and just enough comfortable carelessness to be shirtless in the kitchen. (Steve Rogers was a man that believed in old fashioned things, like wearing tops and bottoms to the kitchen.) There were no hickeys on his neck anymore and she had fought back the urge to leave another.

As a fully grown woman, she hardly had an excuse for such behavior. (It was funny, she would tell her husband when she finally got back to him, it was _hilarious_ the thought of sending him back to the Avengers with hickeys on his neck. It was funny wondering what kind of faces Natasha was going to make, what Sam was going to say. It should have been funny, but it might have just been petty.)

Tony had managed a shirt, and panties, and socks because her feet got cold. It was the most clothing she’d worn to breakfast in the presence of her husband in months. (Although, that was usually an attempt to seduce him, and since this Steve Rogers hadn’t made it out of her bed before sex this morning, it did seem pointless.) 

“Does he eat apple pie?” Steve asked.

“Not really.” Her husband did not eat apple pie anywhere that anyone might witness him doing it. Sometimes, in the safety of their kitchen, when he thought maybe he could get away with a bite without comment, he was known to sneak a forkful. 

“So, it wasn’t a mistake.”

“What?” Tony was sorting through the contents of the fridge, looking for enough of anything to suitably feed Steve. (The lack of a solid nutritional plan for Steve was minor in comparison to this world’s other failings, but it was still offensive.) “I’m going to give Hill a few names—ones a hobbyist chef and the other one is a nutritionist. The nutritionist is kind of nutty but she knows everything about food and the human body and—what?”

“You brought an apple pie to the charity, you said it was your mistake, that you didn’t know I didn’t like them. It wasn’t a mistake.” Steve did not eat apple pie, but he was rubbing a red apple against a towel with every intention of eating it. 

Tony swung the fridge shut and held it shut with one hand on the front. “It wasn’t.”

Steve looked at the apple. Things like apples, things like bananas, they should be stable, reliable, predictable things in this crazy world, but everything had changed so drastically since Steve went into the ocean that even the fruit was different. He’d said the worst part of being alive _now_ was being constantly disappointed by his own expectations. (She’d bought him six pounds of banana candy just to shut him up about it. But also, because there was nothing else she could do.) The whole world was unreliable to a man still discovering what wasn’t how he remembered it. “It might be nice to be able to trust one another. Or at least to be honest with one another.”

“Because we’re fucking?”

Oh, but her husband did not love that word. It wasn’t as appropriate in her marriage as it was here, but that didn’t mean he would have approved nonetheless. Fuck was a perfectly fine word, but _fucking_ just wasn’t something a gentleman did with a lady. “Because it would be nice,” Steve repeated.

“You want me to tell you what my intentions and thoughts are? You’re asking me to trust that you’re going to be able to listen to them? That you’re going to be able to handle what I’ve got to say?”

“Yes,” Steve said, “what else is there? What else do you have to say that’s going to be worse than what you’ve already said? I think you’ve covered everything. I can’t lead a team. I’m not a good man. I don’t deserve you—or my Tony— I take things for granted. I made the wrong choices. I’m an idiot for loving Bucky, or Peggy— What else is there?”

Stacked together like that, the sum of what she’d done seemed _cruel_. Her anger was very often cruel, but not very often as uncontrolled. Her family, her team, her _husband_ had developed strategies for managing her and she had learned the cues to _quit_. She’d learned how to redirect the anger, how to make it useful. But _here_ , oh hell, here was filled with enemies with friendly faces. It was non-stop antagonism, an endless assault of uncovering things that should have pissed everyone off. “I have a plan for answering Tony,” she said. 

“Apple pie?”

“That’s a part of it.”

“Sex?”

“No,” she put _emphasis_ on that. She put _weight_. “This is between us. It’s between you and me, and nobody else.” 

Steve nodded. “So, you’re going to give Hill two names?”

Just like that, normal operating standards were restored. “Yes. A few names, actually. They helped develop the diet that we try to keep you and Bruce on when we are anticipating combat situations. You’re capable without it, but you’re better with it. They are also developing a series of nutritional bars because the diet itself is,” what looked like a never ending buffet. “Intense.”

# B SIDE

The plane ride was a somber affair. Tony had smiled at him and said, “did you sleep at all?”

Steve had not slept, but he hadn’t felt that information was worthwhile to share. Sometimes a man had to broil in his anger; sometimes it was useful to slowly bake from the inside out. “I got a little sleep,” was true only by virtue of technicality. 

Tony knew he was lying but the man was nice enough not to call him out on it. He was holding a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, looking very much like he wasn’t sure what to do next. But he said, “Bruce sent me some new data on Wanda and I was going to—"

“Its okay,” Steve assured him. “Work. I’ll nap.” 

Steve hadn’t napped, but Tony hadn’t looked up from what he was working on for longer than a split second at a time. He only glanced away to make noises, or utter weird phrases to himself, or once just to rub his eyes and let out a noise like a bear growling over lost sleep. Every other moment of the plane ride, Tony was absorbed in the data before him and addressing the problem he’d been given.

The landing was uneventful. The car ride was pleasant and brief. 

It was the elevator that got him. That space right in front of it that he had waited a hundred, two hundred, six hundred times. That space that had been all that separated him from mild-mannered artist type and superhero, the space where he’d stood countless times thinking about whether or not they were going to make it out this time. It was the space of weighing the pros, and cons, and the variables. The space where he convinced himself that his wife was prepared for anything, that Natasha was trained to and excelled at surviving, that Clint was fast and strong and ready, that Bruce would always find his way back, that Sam _wanted_ to be there, or that Thor would always show up when they needed him. This was the space for pep talks and reassuring himself.

But it was the also the space where he kept his doubts, where he looked at Tony’s downturned eyes, still tweaking whatever he’d started developing on the plan. The part where it hit him, how they’d been gone less than two weeks, that he’d walked out here shouting at Natasha about callousness, and cruelty. He’d been like her, thinking this Tony was broken in a way that couldn’t be pieced together again.

Steve had taken Tony home to convalesce, he’d set him up with palliative care. He’d given him a pasture to roam with no expectation that the man could recover. 

Look at them now. 

“How do you do it?” Steve asked when the elevators door opened. They stepped in, the doors closed, Tony was going to ask what the hell he meant so Steve said, “I’ve seen her solve problems that I can’t even understand. You’re,” he pointed at the screen, “building a power dampener for powers that nobody’s in this world has ever seen. This is a problem that no man on this planet has any experience with but you’re just—” 

“It’s just science,” Tony said. 

Steve snorted. “You’re meeting with Bruce?”

“Yup,” Tony said. “He’s supposed to—” The doors opened before Tony could finish saying what he’d started. It wasn’t necessary anyway, what with how Bruce was standing there carrying a second tablet with a pen tucked behind his ear. “Oh good,” Tony was saying, “I was hoping you’d already received the files, I was thinking—”

Bruce was talking over him, one hand reaching up to touch Tony’s arm and redirect him down the right hall, toward the second elevator that would take them to the lab upstairs. Natasha was leaning against the wall by the open elevator doors, shaking her head, “I swear, Bruce is the only man on the planet that I actually think she’d leave you for.”

“They’re friends,” Steve said. He had his hand wrapped around the bag of clothes he’d been carrying since the plane. “Besides, he says he can’t have sex and Tony wouldn’t go for that.” 

Natasha pushed herself against the wall. Her face was caught up in something unreadable, switching between emotions and masks so quickly that it was impossible to recognize what she intended to show and what she was trying to hide. Her hands were resting on her hips, and she was just, _looking_ at him. Just _staring_ as if it had been so long since they’d seen one another. “You look like shit, Steve,” she said at last, but, “he looks good.”

“He was doing good.”

“This isn’t going to break him,” Natasha countered. “We’re all going to be there—and he’s already been through Wanda. Steve don’t give me that look, he isn’t your wife—”

“That means that I shouldn’t care about what—”

“But he _is_ Tony. We _need_ Tony right now. We don’t know when things are going to get switched back—”

“Because he is a person, and you can’t just keep using people for your own benefit Natasha. You can’t just assume that you understand what’s going on because you—”

At some point, the steady rise of their voices, competing to come out on top, had escalated from friendly words exchanged in front of an elevator to her voice like a slap, loud and sharp and silencing, saying, “we might never get our Tony back! And it’s time that you took a minute to think about what this world’s going to look like if we don’t. It’s time to start making better back up plans than sitting around and waiting. And hoping. We have the best minds in the world working on it—we have Tony himself working on it—and nothing. It’s been three weeks, Steve. Three weeks and we’re no closer.”

That must have been the feeling, the one that had been growing like a growl in his gut. The anger that Tony had been called back. The anger at _her_ , at his beautiful, intelligent bitch of a wife, fucking some guy that looked just like him in another world. That was the anger, that feeling that he couldn’t shake, the suffocating realization that there _might_ not be enough room left for hope. Steve punched the wall over the elevator console, and Natasha didn’t even flinch. 

They had to move on; moving on necessitated a certain amount of giving up. Moving on meant accepting a new normal. Accepting that things would remain this way for the foreseeable future, that they would all redirect their attentions elsewhere. 

_We’ll keep working_ was a promise they always made. _We won’t give up_. At least not all at once, but little by little.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said, like she really meant it. Like you said at a funeral. Like nobody had said to him up to that moment. 

Steve rubbed the dust off his fist, and cleared his throat, “I’m back on the team.” It wasn’t a question, it wasn’t a demand, it was only a statement of fact. 

Natasha glanced at the dent in the wall. “We have a strategy meeting tomorrow. Your shield’s in the lockup, and you look like you need a decent dinner and a good night’s sleep. You’re back on the team tomorrow, tonight you’re going to fix,” she motioned at his everything, “so nobody gets any ideas about how maybe you’re not actually ready to come back.”

Because the Avengers ran by unanimous decision when their leaders were missing, because without Tony to protect them, there was nobody to blame for their actions but themselves. Steve shrugged off her stare, “fine.”

# A SIDE

The media liked to throw around this image of Tony that suggested he’d slept his way through half the country before he’d moved on to tour Europe. Even Tony perpetuated the idea, he had described himself as a billionaire (and Steve didn’t know much about his finances but that felt right) playboy (retired, apparently) philanthropist (what else could a decent man with a billion dollars be?). That image, that idea, that Tony was careless with women, that he used them to his own satisfaction and left them without another word—

Well, Steve could believe it, but it wasn’t the image he had of the man. He hadn’t known a Tony that wasn’t part of a paired set. He hadn’t known a Tony that didn’t mumble things like, _Pepper’s not going to like that_ to himself when he thought nobody was listening. He hadn’t known a Tony that frowned at fresh bruises in the mirror, practicing how he was going to tell his girlfriend about the building that had been dropped on him. 

He hadn’t known a Tony that didn’t shout, _let’s wrap this up, I’ve got a date!_. 

Tony called Pepper things like, _honey_ , and he loved her as sure as he was capable of feeling anything. He loved her openly, without shame. He loved her with pride in his every word he spoke about her. 

Tony loved Pepper. 

Steve hadn’t thought about that, (not really, maybe ever), but here he was looking down into what had to be Pepper’s drawer in the bathroom vanity. Looking at a sparse collection of beauty tools (he assumed), a spare tube of lip balm and a compact. There were hair ties in the corner. A little pot of something that promised to relax wrinkles. 

Steve had fucked another man’s wife, in another man’s bed, without caring at all who was getting hurt. It hadn’t felt important. It didn’t necessarily feel important _now_ but it should have. It should have been worth more than a moment’s pause and a twinge of just enough regret to pass for decency. It wasn’t Pepper’s Tony that he was having sex, but it was _Tony_. Maybe it made less of a difference if you’d loved Tony before he got switched with a woman.

Steve slapped the drawer shut and didn’t bother opening another one to look for a comb. He pulled his shirt on and took his shoes with him. 

Tony was still wearing nothing but a shirt and a pair of panties, looking unconcerned about the state of her naked legs, while she watched the afternoon news. “Decided combing your hair was too much work?” she asked. She’d barely glanced at him when he sat on the chair next to hers. “What’s the point in putting all that work into hiding your sex hair when everyone already knows what you’ve been up to?”

“If I thought hiding it was going to spare me their thoughts, I might,” Steve said. He pulled his socks on and ignored the news gleefully reminding everyone all about the charity event the night before. The coverage was complete with Captain America enthusiasts that were breaking down his every line, and his stance, and his stunt at the end. Strong men and specialists and experts were arguing about whether or not Steve had done it all himself. 

Tony hummed along with the sentiment. “I like your hair like that.” She put the TV on mute so she could watch him pull his shoes on without distraction. “You can always tell them I coerced you. They’d believe it.”

(That sounded like him, the Tony that belonged here, the one that protested the necessity of preparation and the repeating of bad ideas but accepted the blame when the Avengers needed someone to take it. Ultron was necessary but Tony was to blame for Sokovia and that had felt _right_ when Steve was angry in the aftermath.)

Why didn’t it feel right here? Why didn’t it sound _right_? She hadn’t coerced him, but she had an advantage he didn’t. She knew everything, and she knew how to use it, and he was—

Not helpless.

He had let her kiss him, he had wanted to kiss her. He had participated in their sexual relationship with just as much ulterior motive as she had. He didn’t want to fuck _Tony_ for being _Tony_ , but he’d wanted to have sex with her, and he hadn’t wanted anyone to tell him what a stupid idea it was. Because she did know _everything_ and he wanted to learn all the secrets about himself he hadn’t figured out yet. “Just because they’d believe it doesn’t make it true.”

Tony shrugged. “It’s true if you believe it.”

“Well I don’t.” He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to listen to all of their opinions. He didn’t want to deal with their side-eyes and their meaningful exchange of stares. He didn’t want to see Natasha, sighing at him like he didn’t understand what was happening, like he was blind to the obvious. He didn’t _want_ to deal with them. “I should go.”

Tony nodded along. “You should.”

Yes, he should, but, “do you think she’ll take him back? Pepper? Do you think Pepper will take Tony back?”

Tony shifted her body, sat with her back against the arm of the couch and her legs folded in front of her. She was looking up and to the side, working out the complexities of a real relationship. (And what must her husband think? What must he feel? How were they going to fix that now?) Her tongue ran across her pink lips and she said, “no.”

“You’re not him.”

Tony’s smile was forgiving in exactly the same way _his_ always was. I’m sorry you can’t understand this, I’m sorry it’s over your head. “But I am,” Tony said. “You can’t feel what I feel, what he’s feeling over there. Maybe he has a fraction of a chance if he comes back and he makes her believe that he never touched my husband. Maybe he’s got the world’s best puppy dog eyes, maybe she gives him another go, but it’ll never be the same. They’ll never be happy again, because he _loves_ my husband.”

(That was nothing Steve ever thought he’d hear.)

Tony shrugged. “I’m not Pepper, but the one I know? She could maybe forgive Tony fucking someone else, because it’s meaningless in the long run. But not this. If Tony and I are really the same, if we would really do the same thing, he won’t even try. He’ll apologize, and he’ll accept the blame because he deserves it, and he’ll hope they can be friends again.”

“Tony loves your Steve?” he whispered. (Things like that, they shouldn’t be said too loud.)

“As frustrating as you are,” she said, “as infuriating as you can be, you are _remarkably_ easy to love.”

Well. Steve sighed. He got to his feet, with his palms rubbing down the front of his jeans, working through how he thought he should feel about that. “I need to go.”

# B SIDE

Here they were again; Bruce and Tony (the science bros) watching numbers and models scrolling across screens. Here they were again, in a lab that looked so much like the one where they’d built Ultron that Tony couldn’t help but hold his breath as he offered tidbits of ideas.

Ideas were dangerous things. Ideas were careless, devoid of consequence, absent circumstance, they were just _ideas_. Ideas became things, that changed lives (for better sometimes, or much, much worse other times). Tony had made a career out of ideas turned to reality, and he’d trusted other men with better understanding to know when his ideas were bad ideas. He’d been that man for someone once, for Obie with all his lust for cruel and effective weaponry.

Obadiah Stane was the sort of man that would paralyze you before he stabbed you in the back, just so he could take his time about it. He was a predator that killed what it didn’t plan on eating, for the simple joy of it. (Obadiah was the sort of man that smiled at your face after he’d hired a terrorist group to kill you.) 

But Tony had never been that man. Tony had been a master of ideas, a wizard of what-ifs. Tony had built weapons that killed more people than he could live with but his ideas were only ideas, they hadn’t been things. They had become things and he’d sold them, and the men who made war had used his ideas-turned-things-turned-weapons to fight enemies. 

Ultron had been one hell of an idea. Ultron should have been a solution to the problem that Tony couldn’t solve on his own. (New York wasn’t a one-off, it was the start of something, it was a call to arms that nobody seemed interested in answering. Even SHIELD that had been using the Tesseract to build weapons to fight aliens had gone belly up.)

Tony didn’t want to Avenge the earth. Tony didn’t want to bury his friends. Tony wanted to _protect_ it. 

The idea wasn’t bad, but the outcome had been. Ultron hadn’t performed as expected, but Vision was better than they had hoped. That was the problem with ideas. Ideas couldn’t be tested until they became things, and things couldn’t be relied on until they were tested. 

It was all just science.

“So you and…” Bruce didn’t want to say _Steve_ out loud. Maybe it was blasphemy to utter things like adultery in the lab. (Maybe that would summon the woman that belonged here, maybe she could show up just in time to save her world from his interference.) He was turning a stylus over and over between his hands, sitting on the edge of a tall computer chair, watching the model cycle through the slight modifications they’d made. 

Tony shrugged. “I think he just misses his wife.”

Bruce didn’t call him a liar with his words because his face was better at conveying his disbelief. “How bad was it? What happened in your world, with the staff? With the—what did you call it? The mind stone? Thor said infinity stones are capable of absolute destruction. We saw what the staff is capable of doing to people—what it did to Clint and Selvig?”

Tony would rather talk about how he’d taken up sleeping in Steve’s bed, and how well he’d been sleeping, about how all his nightmares had gotten fuzzy and indistinct than to answer the question. He was all set on never uttering a single word about it as long as he was stuck here, but Bruce had an honest man’s face and a quiet man’s voice, and that invited confessions. Bruce had a mind for ideas and a shoddy understanding of consequences almost exactly like his, and that meant, out of all of them, he _might_ understand. “I can’t let what happened in my world happen here,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Bruce asked, “ _Let_? Did you _let_ it happen in your world?”

“I caused it,” Tony said.

Bruce processed that slowly, like putting all his thoughts in order to grasp at what kind of catastrophe he thought had unfolded. He was assessing the data the way JARVIS was, working out the most accurate model. When he thought he’d got it, he let out a pained kind of breath. Bruce leaned back into his seat, and he said, “I don’t always remember what the other guy does while I’m away. I come back, and I have this _idea_ of what might have happened. Every time I ask, they tell me that I did good. They say the other guy helped them out. I watch that footage and,” he hesitated, rested his hand on his stomach like it was flopping in his gut. “I would rather never turn into the other guy again. I would rather never have to look at the numbers, at the property damage, at the loss of life, at the— I have no control over what the other guy does, but I have to live with it.” 

“Why?”

“Because I made him, because I thought I knew what I’d found and what it would do, and I didn’t.” Bruce didn’t sigh again, he smiled (just a little) like extending an olive branch. Like saying, _me too_ , and wasn’t that something. Wasn’t that just _something_ , to find someone that wasn’t talking him out of guilt, or into guilt, but accepting and understand.

“I haven’t slept with Steve,” skipped right back to the original question. “I mean, I’ve slept next to Steve but we haven’t had sex. I haven’t had sex with a man in a long time.” (A very long time.) 

Bruce snorted at that. “I think it’s been even longer for him, but I don’t think that’s going to stop the two of you from figuring it out if it comes down to it.” (Just no indication of whether he thought they should, if he thought they shouldn’t, if he thought anything at all on the subject.) “I understand if you don’t want to tell us what happened, but you said that Steve got Wanda to join our side—if this doesn’t work,” he glanced at the screen as it finished updating the model, “it might be good to know how he did that. It might be a good idea to tell him what you know about her.”

“Steve can—”

“I was on the jet,” Bruce said, “on the way back. I watched Thor holding him down. I heard what he was shouting. Wanda made him live through killing his own wife. That’s not something you forget. Whatever your Steve did, whatever he was capable of—don’t assume our Steve is. We can’t stop him from going back to Sokovia, and we’re not going to try, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

“You think he’d try to hurt her?” 

“I think,” Bruce paused, reordered what he was going to say, “I think its important to remember that Steve is capable of anything he wants to be capable of. You think HYDRA would have wasted their time on a man who was stronger than average? Steve is dangerous because he is relentless and uncompromising. HYDRA pissed him off and look what he did to them.”

“I think that’s an oversimplification of the facts,” Tony said. “Steve was already involved in the w—”

“Steve was a showgirl,” Bruce said. “He was a performer. If he hadn’t been at that base in Italy, if he hadn’t heard what happened to the 107th—” He didn’t finish the thought, maybe there wasn’t anything to add to that. History had written Steve Rogers up as a born hero, and there weren’t many men alive that had ever bothered to protest that idea. (At least not that Tony had met.) “Just, watch his back out there. Tell him what you know about how to talk Wanda down. If he knows there’s a way, he’ll have a harder time justifying anything else.”

“Sure,” Tony said. “Sure, I can do that.” (Maybe.)


	27. Chapter 27

# B SIDE

It was only a jet. But all things were only what they were. Trains were only trains, but he’d still hated the sound of them rushing over tracks for _years_. The train hadn’t killed Bucky, and it hadn’t deserved the blame, but memory wasn’t tied to logic. Wooden chairs didn’t deserve his disappointment, but his memory was full of waiting rooms he’d rather not revisit. 

The jet though. The jet was a _fresh_ wound; a recent reminder of how something had crawled into his brain right through his skin and made a mess of the memories it found. Steve had killed his wife inside a jet like this—not really, not in _reality_ but his hands, and his arms and his brain couldn’t tell the difference. Tony had put a lot of things into her jets but she hadn’t installed a bathtub (yet), so he couldn’t have killed her there, but—

But what?

But she wasn’t here. But it was only him, and Natasha, and the distant sound of the crew shouting back and forth across the tarmac. It was the nearby sound of Tony and Clint chatting about nothing. (Breakfast, baseball, and other useless things.) Natasha was completely still, dressed in casual clothes, holding his shield at the end of her arm like it was nothing but a pretty bauble she’d picked up off the ground. 

The shield was just a shield; but it _wasn’t_. There were rules to protect them. Steve had helped to write the rules, and he’d helped to teach the rules, and he’d helped to enforce the rules by being a good boy and following them. But there was Natasha, waiting with no patience, carrying the shield. 

“You said a meeting,” Steve said.

Natasha shrugged at that, “we’re all going to be there. It’s still a meeting. It’s just happening in the jet.”

Steve was wearing khaki’s and yesterday’s shirt. He was shaking off the idea of nightmares he hadn’t slept long enough to let himself have. “She’d be so angry if she were here,” he said. (But she wasn’t. And there was no telling for how long she wouldn’t be.)

“Well,” Natasha said, agreeably, “it’s not as if she would be surprised. If it was ever going to be anyone that broke the rules, it was always going to be us.” Her smile was hopeful, like an olive branch. Natasha excelled at many things, but her skill set usually limited the number of people she was responsible for. (Usually to one, sometimes two.) She held the shield out, “consider this your formal reinstatement.”

Steve’s fingers slid across the surface of the shield, his grip tightened, and Natasha let it go. The weight of it was so familiar to him that it was stranger to think he’d gone so long without it than to feel it again. “What’s the plan?”

The plan was:

Find Wanda using the tracking program that Bruce had developed. The experiments had left her with a permanent energy signal that could be found, provided they treated the tracker with some delicacy since it was a prototype. The brother (Pietro, apparently) didn’t appear to give off the same level of energy. 

Lure Wanda out into the open using a ruse. Apply the dampeners to the perimeter and talk her down. 

The plan was so simple, it was a wonder it had taken them so long to come up with it. It belonged on a playground, with a group of underdogs wearing bully bruises talking about how they were going to take out the kid with the ham-fists. It didn’t belong in the jet, being seriously discussed between them. 

Them. Between Steve, and Natasha, and Clint and _Tony_. 

“What’s the ruse?”

Clint cleared his throat from the front of the plane. He wasn’t necessary to pilot it, but he liked sitting in the pilot’s seat anyway. “We’re not sure.”

“Not sure?” Steve repeated, “that seems like an important part of the plan. How are you going to get her to come out of hiding so you can trap her if you don’t know what’s going to make her come out of hiding?”

“She’s not hiding,” Natasha said. “Why would she even feel like she needed to hide? With power like hers, she’s unmatched in this world. We just need to find her and figure out how to get her farther away from crowds than she might normally be.” _Figure out_ , was what she said with her mouth. But her face, making an attempt toward regretful, was suggesting the obvious.

Steve was a six-foot and _spangled_ , carrying a shield as big as a sore thumb sticking out in any crowd. Steve was back on the team, and it was about time he’d taken his turn at being the bait. He sighed, “reinstated?”

Natasha shrugged, “it’s not my top option. But if nothing else works.”

Steve looked over at Tony who wasn’t saying a word, was watching (and understanding, and processing and keeping all his thoughts in the tightness of his clenched teeth). “We’ll work on the plan,” he said.

# A SIDE

Bucky had a way of arriving to obvious conclusions, a particular, charming kind of announcing ideas that bordered on stupid. Like, saying, _this window lets in a lot of light_ when it was just the two of them in a small room. Back in the nineteen-thirties, Bucky was young and carefree, leaning on a windowsill to look at the rain. 

Maybe Steve had been drawing him like he always had. (Over and over, until a man might accuse him of being _obsessed_.) _It’s a window, Buck._ But that wasn’t what he meant, Bucky hadn’t just noticed the presence of glass, or discovered how light moved through it. No, Bucky had meant, sometimes you didn’t _appreciate_ the obvious until you didn’t have it.

This world didn’t have Tony Stark, and that had felt like a relief twenty-three days ago. The world was _safe_ from Tony Stark if he wasn’t there. But, ( _but_ ), the news was reviewing the spectacular nature of Steve Roger’s ass while dropping asides about how the Avengers appeared to have disbanded. The woman on the news channel was supportive of Captain America (the star spangled America-first sort of man) and the idea that maybe the other, not quite as lovable, not quite as admirable, members of the team were missing.

Tony was staying quiet. Hulk had not been seen since the disaster at Sokovia, leading some to believe that he had _died_ and there was a quiet sigh of relief about that. Wanda was in Sokovia where she _belonged_.

Steve didn’t like that flavor in his mouth. He didn’t like the newscasters nodding to themselves about how it was good and right and proper that Wanda stay away, that she not be allowed back. America didn’t need all the Avengers, just the good, strong boys like Steve Rogers in his fucking spandex tights.

Rhodey interrupted the quiet of the kitchen. Three days had not been enough time to make the man stop glancing at him like he’d shoved a whole lemon into his mouth at once. “Morning,” he said on his way to the fridge.

This was a diplomatic nightmare. This was the exact reason that men who called themselves leaders didn’t sleep with members of the team. This was one of those sticky public relations situations that Steve tried to avoid, but there he was anyway, trying to convince himself to start the day, and there Rhodey was, still pissed Steve had sex with his best friend. (Or fucked, according to her.) Steve had never slept with anyone before, he’d never understood the awkwardness that resulted.

But here he was, incapable of thinking about anything but the sounds Tony made, of how her body felt against his, of how it felt wrapped around his, of how sharp her short-short nails were with they dug into his back. He was thinking about all of her specific instructions so loudly that it was a wonder Rhodey couldn’t hear the sound of her moans rolling out of Steve’s ears. 

“Look,” Steve said.

“Please don’t,” Rhodey said like a slap. He dropped a carton of eggs on the countertop with more force than necessary. His palms were flat to the countertop, he was doing his best to be _civil_. “I just want to eat breakfast.”

(What was it she said back on that couch, looking at his messy hair with obvious fondness? About how she’d take the blame if he wanted to give it to her.) “She’s not _really_ Tony.”

Rhodey snorted a laugh, half-shaking his head, looking at the counter like he could count high enough to keep the confrontation from becoming really ugly. But when he looked up, his face was murder. “She is really married,” he said. “To _you_.”

“Not me.”

“I _know_ ,” was all venom. 

Steve sighed, he turned so he was looking more at Rhodey and less at the TV. “I don’t think it should matter what I do in my own bedroom—”

“Then you should try doing it in your bedroom. Maybe don’t do it in Tony’s.”

“We need to start concentrating on how to get Wanda and Vision back—”

“Do we!” Rhodey shouted at him. There was no question, just a callback to a conversation they’d had here not so long ago. Rhodey had stood here and told him that he had no idea what Tony did for them.

Steve hadn’t known but he thought he did. He thought he could count every little thing that Tony did for the Avengers, but here was, thinking about how one of the door locks wasn’t working. Thinking about how FRIDAY kept apologizing between ten-twenty and eleven PM but she couldn’t complete any requests and she didn’t know why. There was the news, talking in shades of relief about how Wanda couldn’t come back. Hill was on the phone with Pepper, trying to figure out how to expand the budget when the man doing all the paying wasn’t available to authorize transfers. 

Here was Steve, wearing spandex on prime-time TV, telling reporters in coffee shops that Tony was his friend. He was Steve letting allies be put into jail cells, acting like he didn’t understand what was happening, having sex with Tony Stark in Pepper’s bedroom and thinking that was perfectly okay and—

“I was wrong,” Steve said when there was nothing else to say, because saying: _we do need Tony_ still didn’t feel like something he _could_ say. (Should, maybe.)

Rhodey sighed, “the US isn’t going to just _let_ Wanda back in, not with news coverage like this. Either we wait until it calms down or we have to come up with one hell of a good reason why she’s coming back.”

# A SIDE

She had the idea that maybe she’d been here before; she just didn’t remember where it was, how she’d gotten here or how long she’d been there. But there she was, in a sleek black one-piece bathing suit, sitting on a lounge chair, looking directly at Tony Stark himself. 

“Did I tell you to call me Nettie?” (Was that a memory?)

Tony was wearing black swim trunks and a tie, sitting with his legs crossed in front of him and his belly in wrinkles. His elbows were on his knees, he was nodding along.

“Where are we?” It was like being caught inside a screen that had frozen halfway to loading the details. She could hear the noise of the ocean, but she couldn’t see it. She could feel the heat of the day but there was no sun. There was no light and no shadow because there was nothing but blank space. But Tony—well Tony was perfectly detailed, she could have counted every single one of his long eyelashes, could have run her fingers through his hair. “Are we really _here_?”

“Usually you have the answers,” he said. He tipped his head to the side a little, narrowed his eyes at her, “Maybe that’s not you, not you from right now.”

“What?” That didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all, she kept looking sideways at the sound of tourist ordering drinks but there was _nothing_ there. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yes,” Tony agreed. “Do you think Steve would kill someone?”

“Well,” she concentrated on Tony’s face, on how tired he looked. On how his shoulders were slumped forward and his hands were hanging in defeat. He looked _old_ to her, and there was something funny about that, what with how they were exactly the same age. ( _Exactly_ , right down to the minutes and seconds.) “He’s already killed some, so I don’t think it’s exactly a stretch.”

“They said,” Tony almost smiled, like a defeat, “Wanda got into his head, that she made him live through killing you—that it took Thor to hold him down. They said Steve would kill her and that I should remind him, where I’m from, he talked her down.”

Oh, well, that was her husband for you. God’s Righteous Man, always finding loop-holes to leap through. She pulled her legs, so they were crossed like his, rested her palms on her knees with her back straight. “He wouldn’t do it on purpose, but if it came down to a fight?”

“Part of me wants him to kill her,” Tony whispered. As if there wasn’t any place safe in all the world for him to utter the words. “When did I become that person? The kind of person that thinks, maybe she deserves to die? Maybe we’ll be doing the world a _service_ if I just don’t remind him she can be an ally?”

“It’s hardly the first person we’ve thought the world was better off without,” she said. “Hammer’s still alive. Obadiah would be alive if he’d just _stopped_. Vanko could have been alive. Bucky is alive.” (She tried so hard, all the time, to remember that Bucky had been brainwashed, that it hadn’t been his fault, but her Mother’s death was a brand-new wound all over again. It was a monumental unfairness, so that every time she thought she could move past it, she was brought back to that same moment. That moment when Obadiah had put his hand on her shoulder and told her how sorry he was for her loss.) 

“Would you stop him?”

She thought of Sokovia, of the crater, of the survivors, of the broken road and the endless piles of debris that was trapping them in a disaster zone. She thought of Wanda looking at her across a patch of grass, of the news playing outrage over-and-over-and-over. She thought of how the Avengers had fractured, how they were limping along, how the whole ugly world she’d woken up in was heading headlong into an even uglier conclusion with no way to avoid it. “Yes,” she said, “I wouldn’t make him live with it.” 

So would Tony. It wasn’t even a question. She horded the blame in her world, she printed it out in duplicate and she filled file boxes with it. When the men with suits talking about accountability showed up, she had plans for how she was going to deal with it. Her empire ran on accountability (now, not always). But this Tony, he absorbed it. He carried it on his back and (from an outsider perspective) it was breaking him. “Why do you think we were switched?”

“You think there’s a _reason_?”

“You think there isn’t?”

She hadn’t thought about it at all. She’d barely wasted a few hours on working out how to get back; she’d done nothing at all compared to this man with the hunched shoulders. He’d gotten such a head-start on her that she was a guest in her own dream. “I don’t know,” she said.

That made Tony sit back, that made him let out a breath. “We’re the same height.”

“I can wear your clothes.”

“Why did you fuck him?” Did not seem to follow along the discussion at all. But then, again, if they were looking for similarities, it was worth discussing why she’d done what _he_ hadn’t. 

She curled her fingers inward, let the nails drag lightly across her skin as they went. She didn’t wrap her arms around her body, she didn’t hunch her back to protect herself. There was no need to hide here. “Wasn’t that your plan? To remind me what I’m missing? To make me feel this—” (Agony.) 

“Yes,” Tony agreed, “to _feel_ it. I thought you would work harder to get home, I didn’t think you’d fuck him. You were supposed to remember you _love_ your husband, that he’s your—safety, your home? That he’s everything you can’t find where you are and you didn’t. You just fucked an imitation.”

Well. “He’s not an imitation. He’s confused, and lonely, and lost. Everyone in this stupid world you came from is confused and lonely and lost. You’re all fucking morons, wandering around looking for the same thing, and not a single of you realizes that if you just got the fuck over yourselves that everything you need you already have.”

“I had what I needed,” Tony answered. “I had Pepper.”

That made her roll her eyes and she shouldn’t have. “Pepper was never going to be happy with Iron Man, Tony. We both know that. I’m sorry that she saw what she did. But it was never going to work.”

Tony was _furious_ and it brought a brightness to his face that she thought (without having any reason to think it) that nobody had seen in _years_. His hands slid down his legs to curl around his knees and he leaned forward as far as this non-world would let him. He was grimacing with fury, speaking calm and low, saying: “Maybe you should have failed, maybe you should have lost the house, and the team, and _JARVIS_. Maybe then you’d know that _you_ don’t know everything.”

When she woke up, it was with a scream, a rise of noise that rattled out of her chest. It wasn’t fear but _shock_ that jerked her out of bed. The blankets were wrapped up around her legs and she was shoving and kicking at them with blind determination. (And with for no reason.) The dream was slipping, slipping away, but what stayed with her was the idea that he’d reached his hand right through the skinny barrier between their worlds.

That he’d kicked her out of that shared world.

That he had more _control_ that he realized.

And maybe, as the dream faded, and her heart settled, that he was _hurt_ , and that he had good reason to be.

# B SIDE

Tony didn’t sleep on the jet (not often) but there he was, kicking awake. Steve (reliable, predictable, sturdy _Steve_ ) was sitting right at his side, frowning at the tracking program displayed on the tablet resting in his hand. The man didn’t look up, didn’t startle, didn’t do more than lift one hand away from his body to rest on Tony’s thigh, and he was saying, “it’s okay,” by rote. 

Things were not presently okay. It was hard to remember why. (Or it wasn’t. Pepper. Wanda. Sokovia.) “I don’t think she’s very sorry about it, Cap,” he was mumbling before he had any chance to think through what he was even saying.

Steve did look up then, look right and down at him. It wasn’t anger on his face, it wasn’t exhaustion, it wasn’t betrayal, it was just _sadness_. It was a kid facing the grimness of the world with squared shoulders and a heavy heart, accepting that things were as good now as they were ever going to get. Steve said, “she usually isn’t.”

“Are we there?”

“Yes. We landed about fifteen minutes ago.”

That did explain the stillness of the jet around them. Tony pushed his feet against the floor to straighten up, he looked around, and then back at Steve. His eyebrow did the questioning for him (where was everyone) and Steve seemed to understand the meaning.

“Clint is doing the recon. Natasha is following him.” 

That left the two of them, in a jet, in a clearing, as close to the city as they could get without arousing too much suspicion. Tony stretched his legs by taking a little walk, out of the jet and into the forest. Out where his shoes were crunching on sticks and fallen leaves. Out where the trees were still standing, where the smell of rain was hanging in the air.

Out into a Sokovia that still had birds, and bugs, and _life_. Out to a Sokovia that hadn’t been reduced to a crater, because Wanda Maximoff and never met Tony Stark. Even if she had, Tony had built a safety net that would have protected the world from her panic. No matter how events unfolded, Sokovia would not have met the same end. 

It couldn’t have. 

Because Nettie wasn’t afraid. And what sort of bullshit was that? What sort of motherfucking bull _shit_ led a woman to believe she’d absolved herself of fear? Of guilt? Of loneliness?

Tony was _terrified_ of the things that were coming for him, the things he couldn’t predict, the ones that he could, the ones that he couldn’t _prepare_ for. He had seen the reality of his failure in true HD, he’d heard it in Dolby surround sound, he’d felt it as sure as he could feel the cool breeze across the back of his neck. 

Tony was afraid of not being enough. He was afraid of being too much. And oh-God-but-shouldn’t-he-be, what with how Sokovia-was-a-crater because of him. Because he’d subdued Hulk but at what cost? Because he’d built a security blanket that became a fully realized intelligence. (Not a person. But something _alive_ , something with _ideas_ , something with independent _motivation_.) He’d downloaded JARVIS into a waiting body when he could have _not_ and it became a real boy.

Tony had built a house where no house could have been built. Tony made a metal suit that could fly. Tony could do any fucking thing he set his mind to and more than _anything_ , all Tony wanted was—

To be wrong.

For it to be six years from now, for Cap to still be looking at him with dismissiveness, for the team to keep thinking he was losing his mind, for the world to keep spinning. He wanted it to be ten years, and peace on earth. He could go twenty, still working on shoveling dirt over his guilt about how he’d destroyed Sokovia, with the team long-since moved on. He could live to be ninety, crippled with the weight of his age, watching Cap still doing handstands at criminals on the news.

Anything, anything, _any_ thing but the realization of the prophecy he’d said back in that lab. 

“We’ll fail,” is what he said then, what he found himself mumbling now. (But Nettie wouldn’t. Nettie had a team that nothing could break, and a world where there was solid ground in Sokovia. Nettie wasn’t going to fail, she was standing right at Steve’s side and Steve could bend reality in half when he needed to. Steve said: _then we do that together too_ and he would make sure they did.) 

“To catch Wanda?” Steve asked.

Tony had lost track of him, and he turned around at the suddenness of the sound. Steve was squinting at him through the start of a real pissy drizzle. “Oh, no,” Tony said. “No.” (I wouldn’t make him live with it, Nettie said. But fuck her.) “I should tell you what happened to Sokovia in my world.”

# B SIDE

There were less ideal places to hear the story than in the rain, under the poor cover of trees, in a skinny forest in a foreign country. Steve might have preferred to have this talk indoors, with something warm to drink and blankets available. He had a reliable history with blankets, he believed in the healing power of warmth. 

Tony’s story was a nightmare. It was a complete and total failure from beginning to end. And when it came to a short close, the man let his arms fall to his sides, stood there and waited to take his beating like he deserved.

Steve was standing three feet away, with his hair plastered to his forehead, filling up with that old-old-anger. His hands were on his hips and he was exhaling harder than necessary because he’d started holding his breath about the time Wanda shoved her fist into Banner’s brain and sent Hulk on a rampage. “Fucking Starks,” was the first thing he could get out of his chest, the first _whole_ thought he had.

“I think my story tops anything she’s gotten up to,” Tony said.

“I think I’m still more pissed that she’s fucking someone else,” Steve returned. It wasn’t relevant, it wasn’t anything he meant to say. It wasn’t even anything that was worth bringing up. Just a bit of the pot calling the kettle black and all that, because Steve _wanted_ this man. He wanted him even now, miserable in the rain, with his clothes soaked to his body, with his face floundering for an emotion to express. “Look,” sounded _rational_. Steve just didn’t feel rational. “I don’t know how to start, I don’t know what to _say_.”

Tony shrugged, because he was still shouldering all that blame. He was carrying around the ghosts of the dead. In his world, if he’d been left alone, he would have been funneling his money and resources into fixing what he broke. He would have done it alone, after dark, when there was nobody to see at all. (Because that’s what Steve’s wife did, that’s how she dealt with her guilt.)

“My wife has this protocol,” he said. (Was that what he wanted to say? Here, with the rain getting fatter and the ground getting wetter. Was that what he wanted to say?) “She calls it Worse Case Scenario and she developed it to protect the Avengers in case something— In case something like your Sokovia ever happened.” (To be so blunt.) “She says, we’re one good disaster away from being considered criminals. So I asked her, I said, how do you plan on protecting the team and she didn’t answer me.”

“She’d take the fall,” Tony said. There was humor in that statement, in the way he seemed to approve of her methods, “but it wouldn’t be the same if it was her, it wouldn’t be like it was—Clint. They’d put any one of you in jail. It has to be her.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Steve said. “That’s what you Starks don’t understand. It’s not all about you.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “You put a plane in the water to protect—”

“Look at what I lost! _Everything_. I thought I was dying to change the world and it’s exactly the same shitty place it was when I hit the water! I thought the Avengers were going to do _something_ good for the world, that we were going to protect the people that couldn’t protect themselves. I thought we were equals, but I can’t even own my own _shield_. My wife is making plans for how long she’s going to go to jail if things go south behind my back and I’m supposed to be happy about it? I’m supposed to think it’s for the best, that it’s the only way? I’m not afraid of governments, Tony. I’m not afraid of juries. I’m not afraid of disasters and public opinion because I have _faith_ in my team.”

And his wife didn’t. Not enough. Or maybe it wasn’t about faith for her, or this Tony. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them to do their best, to win the day, it was that he couldn’t. Steve hadn’t met his wife before that cave in Afghanistan. He hadn’t known her before she’d killed her first man. He had never gotten to know the careless woman on the TV programs. He only knew the Tony Stark that carried her personal demons in a glowing-blue-circle in her chest. 

“I have faith in his team,” Tony said. He licked the rain off his face. “I have faith in Steve. You’re wrong if you think she doesn’t have faith in you, if you think her Worst Case Scenario protocol is an insult. The team _can_ function without her, without me. It _cannot_ function without you. Without _him_.” Tony looked like he didn’t want to have to be the one to say it, but there he was, opening his mouth anyway, adding on: “You’ll be fine without her, Steve. You’ll be fine no matter what.”

Wasn’t that just amazing? Wasn’t that so giving? Wasn’t that so wonderfully understanding of his wife? To plan how she was going to surrender just so he could go on without her. Because he _could_ , because he _had_. “It’s really fucking raining,” he said because there was nothing else to say about it. 

Tony snorted and then coughed when the water went up his nose. They retreated across the muddy ground, back inside the jet with just enough warmth to make Tony start shivering. They stood there, watching the water hit the ground. “Wanda is a good kid. She got mixed up with people with bad intentions, but what she wants? What she wants more than she wants me dead, is for her country to be safe. She’s you, if Erskine was evil.”

“After everything you just said, you expect me to believe you think that?”

“Yes.”

# A SIDE

Somewhere between the base of her throat and the bottom of her gut felt like a cord had been plucked. It felt like a tuning fork, vibrating-vibrating-vibrating like searching for an answer that she couldn’t give. Her hands were busy (re)designing a baseball that could withstand Steve Rogers. 

But, why? That was the thought that bubbled up in her brain, that burst like popcorn, again and again:

Why hadn’t Natasha given Tony a chance?  
Why hadn’t Steve and Tony met before New York?  
Why was Tony the only one that was a woman in her world and a man in this one?  
Why had Pepper ever decided to date Tony?  
Why hadn’t Steve and Tony ever become friends?  
Why  
Why

Why?

“Ms. Romanoff is approaching, sir.” FRIDAY never turned the music entirely off, she just lowered it enough she could be heard over it, and kept it a lull for ten seconds to see if there would be any reaction. It said a great deal about this world that Tony’s first, brightest, best thought involved looking left at the long screwdriver sitting on the desktop to her right. 

“Let her in,” Tony said. 

Natasha could have bypassed the doors if it came down to it. Just, there was no benefit to letting it come down to that. Instead of barriers, Natasha waltzed in through open doors, carrying two white coffee cups with a little sack of pastries tucked under her arm. Instinct demanded the offering be rejected but thirst (and hunger) conceded that it wasn’t likely the items were poisoned. Natasha set them down near Tony’s left hand and pulled a second stool over to make herself comfortable. 

“I must have misread the invitation,” Tony said.

“That’s funny,” Natasha said without missing a beat, “I could read it very clearly from where you left it on Steve’s neck.” She took a sip of the coffee while she stared Tony down. Aggression had a way of making Nat _more_ beautiful. (That was just Tony’s fondness for women that were going to cause her the most problems.) But this, this apathetic sort of annoyance made them just two women that were really tired of having this conversation.

Tony took the cup and leaned back into her chair. “I didn’t build the suits after New York. I built this,” she tapped on the desktop to pull up The Diamond. It was still in the planning stage here, held back by how she had no idea where she could build it. “I built baseballs, bats.”

“I don’t know, the suits seem like they would be more useful.”

“I haven’t needed them.”

Natasha ripped open the bag holding her pastry (something with little chocolate chunks on the top, something that looked dry and flaky). She set her cup down and crossed her legs with one foot planted firmly on the floor. “Wanda showed me a memory, she made it feel like the worst thing that ever happened to me was being sterilized as part of the graduation ceremony. It felt,” she paused there, lingered on the memory and the experience, “ _so_ real to me. As if I had spent all these moments in my life in quiet agony over it. Now,” she pulled apart a bit of pastry, “I don’t like it. But if I had to list the top five worst things I’ve ever lived through, it wouldn’t make the list.”

“Point?”

“You think you’re better than the man whose bed you’re sleeping in.” (Now that sounded like something she’d already heard once today.) “But you’re not. You think our Tony is silly, that he’s damaged, that he’s let Steve walk all over him. You think we don’t know we owe him, that he deserves more than he’s gotten from us. You think we owe you something just for showing up and making things _more difficult_ for us.” 

“You’re _unlikeable_ ,” Tony said. She took another sip of her coffee.

“Tony doesn’t always get things right. Sometimes, I want to strangle him in his sleep. _But_ , there isn’t anything Tony wouldn’t do for this team. There’s not one single thing he wouldn’t sacrifice. But here you are, in his bed, fucking Steve, causing problems, still thinking that we’re all out to get you.” Natasha managed to look aware of how much she factored into that feeling. She managed to acknowledge it without saying a word, like agreeing that she had been out to get her.

(And Natasha had enjoyed it, a bit, the way all cruel people enjoyed the upper hand.)

“Steve’s a grown man.”

“I almost hope you can’t get home,” Natasha said. “I _almost_ hope you have to live with this mess you made. I hope he’s sleeping with your husband, I hope he’s having the time of his life.” (Funny how many words it took to relate one very simple idea. How long it took Natasha to say _I hate you_.) Funny how sad it made her look. “But, Steve’s finally figured out Stark doesn’t exist just to piss him off, so I guess something good came out of this.” 

Tony took another sip of her coffee, she considered the situation, her actions, the outcomes. (No, she considered _why_ , and she considered _Pepper_.) “The man I married is the best thing that could happen to your Tony. My husband taught me the world wasn’t going to eat me. If you think that some part of me doesn’t agree with you, doesn’t think that maybe he deserves to stay there—you’re very wrong.” (All that and,) “I am using Steve. He knows that, and I didn’t even have to tell him.”

“Well,” Natasha said in time with dusting her fingers off, “as long as we all know where we stand.” She took a sip of the coffee, licked her lips, and said, “so lets talk about how we can start fixing the mess we’ve made.”

That was the thing about Natasha, the internal balance she kept in her head, the one where all deeds could be matched and forgotten. There was no need to dwell on prison showers and acts of aggression just like there was no need to keep bringing up broken arms and concussion-comas. They were equals now.

# A SIDE

No matter how far, how long, or how hard Steve ran every single thought brought him back to Pepper. (No, it didn’t, but he was a liar in his own head, trying to convince himself he had nobler intentions.) He put his thoughts, like his feet, squarely on a good starting spot, he told himself he was going to think it through.

_It_ was, how to get Wanda and Vision back to the US. _It_ was how to determine the next mission. _It_ was moving forward, improving the team, repairing the damage that they had done. _It_ was making this world safe to live in.

(Safe for who, though? Safe for everyone? Safe for him? Because the men on conservative news were sitting around a table heaping reason after reason the Avengers needed to be under government control. They were shouting their agreements about the necessity of regulation, bantering about how Sokovia proved what they had been saying since New York. Since Tony Stark stood at the head of a news broadcast and said: _I am Iron Man_. Safe for Tony, is maybe what he meant.)

Here he was again, standing on well-worn tracks, hands on his hips, sweat dripping down his back, staring at the dirt and thinking about Pepper. Thinking about how he shouldn’t have let himself get dragged into this stupidity. How he had managed to keep a clear head all this time, how he hadn’t been this confused and this caught up and this reckless since he was seventeen begging Bucky for any scrap of affection the man could give him.

Bucky wasn’t gay, and Steve Rogers wasn’t straight, and they were never-ever going to fit together but that didn’t mean he hadn’t wanted them to. It was a miracle that Bucky loved him, that’s how it had felt back in those snowy days, a fucking _miracle_ that Steve was desperate to keep. (He still was. All he had to do was see the man and it was like the whole world got pulled out from under him.)

What had she said? My husband’s love for Bucky isn’t rational?

Steve couldn’t bring himself to be too angry about sleeping with a woman that married him in another world. It didn’t feel much like a betrayal, but that might have been just selfishness. 

But _Pepper_. But he’d betrayed _Tony_ , and if it weren’t so convoluted, it might have been funny. 

“Should have stayed a virgin,” Natasha said. She had a split lip and a friendly smile as she came across the yard from the compound. All the anger she’d been working on for days (and weeks) was gone from the motion of her body. “You only had ninety-nine problems when you were.”

“What?” Steve asked. But also, “what happened?”

“I had to settle something,” Natasha said. 

(Steve didn’t need more than one guess about what needed settling. But he wasn’t going to comment on things he couldn’t be rational about.) Instead, he said, “we can use her, Nat. They’re starting to talk about government regulation—”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—”

“No,” Steve shook his head, “no, I’m not working the American government, I’m not working for a foreign government, I’m not working for any man whose intentions I don’t know. Governments change their mind all the time about what’s important, about whose important enough to save. We can’t let the—” (What had they called them on the news?) “Sokovia Accords happen.” 

Natasha looked amused, and it was _honest_ , at least. “So, what, you bring her in as an image consultant?”

“I keep hearing how efficient her media campaigns are.” He looked at his feet for a beat, looked up again, squinting to block out the sun while Natasha worked through how she wanted to respond. “And we need Wanda and Vision back, we need them to be able to come back.”

“Yeah,” Natasha agreed. “I’m sure Hill will love working with her.” But, just so it was said: “Be careful with her, Steve. She doesn’t love you.”

No. She loved a man that looked just like him, and he was nothing but a warm body pillow that helped her sleep at night. (That was all it was, that was why he betrayed Tony with such blind enthusiasm. For nothing but a lie that felt like something genuine. That’s why Pepper was heartbroken and he was running circles and—) “It’s just sex, Natasha.”

# B SIDE

“I never wanted to stop being Iron Man,” Tony said. The quiet had gone on too long, there wasn’t enough stimuli to distract him. Just the sound of the of the rain and the shadowing inside of the jet. Steve was sitting across from him, looking a bit like a flower with a broken stem. (Or a man who hadn’t slept in a few days.) “I blew up all my suits. I have this problem,” and who would believe that, “with acting before I think things through? I blew them up for Pepper, because Pepper didn’t like them. I thought that was all I needed to do. I thought I could love her enough to give them up. So, I took the arc reactor out of my chest and I—”

“Came back anyway,” Steve supplied.

“Steve dropped a helicarrier on Washington DC. Natasha dumped all of SHIELD’s files on the internet, she showed up at a Senate hearing and told them that the Avengers were untouchable.” (That had felt like a victory and a cold shower all at once, watching the news play the clips. It had been a fantastic disaster, too close after his own. He’d been standing there, half-dressed, listening to Pepper in the shower, repeating: _stay out of it, stay out of it, stay out of it_ but he’d picked up that phone when Steve called, and he’d gone right back to it.) “We spent a while finding HYDRA bases to destroy.”

“Us too,” Steve said, “minus the helicarrier dropping on DC. We did intercept the Winter Soldier attempting to assassinate director Fury.”

Tony snorted, didn’t laugh, leaned his head back against the wall behind him. “I want to love Pepper more than I want to want to be Iron Man. I want her to understand why I have to do this. I don’t even understand why I have to do it.”

“Because you can.” Steve stretched his legs in front of him, sighed like deflating, “and if you can do these things, and you don’t do them—you have to live with that. I met my wife at an unusual time, both of us were working off our disappointment about being alive when we were sure we were going to die. She said, if you never had to be Captain America again, would you be happy?” Steve smiled at the memory, “I don’t need the suit. I don’t need the shield. I could have none of it, I would still do the same things. She’s, _you’re_ the same way.”

Sure, he was. Minus the righteousness, minus the certainty, minus the stamina, they were exactly the same. Tony didn’t dispute it because this Steve was the sort of man that wouldn’t let you think poorly of yourself. Instead he said, “you look like shit. When’s the last time you slept?”

Steve rubbed his face with a guilt smile, said, “I don’t remember.”

Well. Tony got up just far enough to cross the distance walking on his knees, and sat next to the man, sharing the rain-damp body heat. He looked down at his hands resting on his own lap, thinking half-thoughts about a dream he thought he’d had. “I need you out there, Steve. I need you at your best.” 

“I’ve got your back, Stark.”

Of course he did. Tony cleared his throat. “Good. Great, come on, lay down. Don’t look at me like that. I know you can sleep on concrete, so lay down, close your eyes. It’s nap time.” 

Steve’s protest was a look of disbelief and outrage melting right off his face. His body slid sideways like he had no control over it. There he was, big-and-tall, and resting his head in Tony’s lap, eyes closed, hands folded over his chest. His hair was still wet between Tony’s fingers, he sighed again, shifted and relaxed into the touch. “I’m sorry about Pepper,” he said without opening his eyes. “My wife is sorry too, she just doesn’t like to admit it.”

“Don’t sweat it, Steve.” There was nothing they could do about it now. “Get some sleep. I’ve got your back.”


	28. Chapter 28

# A SIDE

Tony wasn’t a woman made to make resolutions. She could decide things, she could follow through, but she couldn’t maintain a resolution. It wasn’t a lack of willpower, it all broke down to the connotations of the word. Because resolutions were New Year’s Eve’s impulses, making promises to the new year and the new year how you weren’t going to do the exact same thing. 

Except Tony’s only in New Years was booze and beautiful women. She took as many of each as she could get, and she made no promises to herself or anyone else about getting her act together. That must have been why she was sitting on the edge of Pepper’s bed, wearing nothing but a pair of panties, with both her arms wrapped around her body. It must have been why her fingertips were seeking out the little bruises Steve’s fingers left. (This Steve didn’t know yet, how hard he could hold on, how deep he could grip and for how long. That took practice, and effort, and communication.) 

Tony kept shooting down her own thoughts, the sneaky regretful thoughts about how she was going to do the right thing. She was going to stop letting _this_ Steve Rogers seduce her with his hopeful smile and his inconvenient confusion. She was going to do it because it was _right_ , because she was _married_ , because—

No, she wasn’t.

She’d picked a dress with a flirty skirt, she’d hummed her way through making another of Grandma’s famous apple pies, and now she was tripping at the finish line. Because of _Pepper_.

Because of _Mr._ Stark that lived here, because of a residual feeling of anger that hadn’t come out of her own chest. This was anger how she hadn’t felt it in ages. It was unanswerable, it asked for no vengeance, it only wanted to announce itself. The anger existed, and it wasn’t hers, and she still couldn’t bring herself to resolve to be better.

No. Tony put on her dress, she packed up her pie, and she drove to the Avenger’s compound. Hill was at the door when she arrived, looking unimpressed with fruity desserts, holding the door and eying Tony’s knees. “Is this going to be a problem?”

“Which thing?” Tony asked. She spun around, let the skirt flare up around her thighs and land again, swishing into place in exactly the way that made the man she married go pink in the cheeks. “Its customary to bring a hostess gift.”

Hill was a woman with a passive face; the sort of person that Tony had always tried to keep on her side. (A powerful ally but a far worse enemy, to be so blunt.) She crossed her arms over her chest, “Steve’s a nice guy.” (There were an awful lot of nice guys in the world.) “It’s kind of cunty to mock him while you’re using him for sex.”

Tony licked her lips as they curled into an innocent smile. She lifted the pie up. “I do miss your refreshing honesty. Is this going to affect our working relationship?”

“No.”

“Great,” she said. “I’m going to go put this in the kitchen. I assume you want to follow me, and then we can get started on the media campaign. The most important thing you need right now is access to lawmakers. I’d say to make a play to get into the good favor of the Secretary of State but, Ross is a tough nut to crack and you don’t have anything he wants.”

“What does want?” Hill asked.

“Prestige and pussy,” Tony said as she led them through the hall toward the common kitchen. It was completely empty, giving the impression that they were alone in the world. The counter was the perfect place to put her perfect pie.

Hill’s face was expressionless when Tony turned around to face her. “Ross is our eventual goal?”

“Yes. As gross as the idea is, he is unfortunately the man in the position you need control of, and that means playing nice with the dick. Now, lets talk about low level marketing—I noticed that we’re not very popular abroad. We’ve got to figure out how to keep America on our side while improving our look in Europe.”

Hill didn’t move to follow her, just stood there looking at the pie, frowning to herself. 

“I’m not being cunty,” Tony said from the doorway. “My husband loves apple pie and he won’t eat it because it’s some big joke to the rest of the world. What’s more American than apple pie? Captain America eating apple pie. Mr. Stark sent me a message, I’m sending one back. Please don’t tell Steve, I don’t think it’ll work if I explained it.”

Hill rolled her eyes, “we could open recruitment in other countries. Fury and I had discussed it when—”

# B SIDE

Steve’s marriage had started out as a single blanket affair. Back when making a good impression was more important than personal comfort, back when making adjustments and concessions for the comfort of others seemed _essential_ , they had made do with a single blanket. A single, shared blanket was unmaintainable. Tony liked to wrap her body in a blanket, until it fit her elbows and knees as snug as a glove. (She was a blanket hog, that’s what she was.) She was strategically warm: all cold beyond the blanket and body hot inside. But Steve was a radiating furnace of supernatural warmth. Tony liked to sleep (mostly) naked, but she didn’t like being touched.

That was the biggest problem. There she was with all her skin, underneath the blanket, and there he was with his hands magnetized to the mesmerizing reality of being allowed to touch. In his sleep, his hands had minds of their own, and they always-always-always found their way to her bare skin. 

Just like this, waking up to the slow realization that he’d already slept too long. The sounds weren’t right to be his bedroom; the company wasn’t familiar enough to be his wife. But his hands didn’t care when they were half-asleep. His hands could find the skin of anyone sleeping that close to him, they could duck right under the hemline of any T-shirt. They could burrow under anything looser than skin. His fingers were spread across Tony’s back, sliding up his back and dragging the shirt up as they went. 

Tony—not his wife, the other Tony, the new Tony, the one that kept kissing him without following through—was arching against Steve’s body. Body language was hard to decipher with your eyes closed and your hands on a single-minded mission, but Tony helped him out by putting his leg across Steve’s. He helped out by running his palm up Steve’s arm, by letting it fall so it was resting against his jaw. 

Steve woke up as his arm tightened and Tony was dragged that last little bit of free space forward. “Are they back yet?”

“Would it turn you on if they were?” Tony whispered back.

No. That was his wife’s thing, watching other people fuck. He tipped his head to check for himself, but Tony pulled his face back, so it was only the two of them. Only the shared heat, the nearness, the taste of mutual breath. 

“Not yet,” Tony said. 

So, there was time. Just a little, just enough that he could kiss Tony. (If his wife was here, she would have slapped him by now. She was slithered free from his grip. She liked sex in the morning, but she didn’t like Steve’s arms pulling at her when he was half-awake and half-aware. She didn’t like being woken up that way. There were reasons, of course there. But she didn’t share and he didn’t ask.) Steve might have expected resistance, but there was none. Tony kissed him back. 

Tony kissed him back like he knew something Steve didn’t, maybe. Like he had seen the future, like he had given in to the inevitable. Tony kissed him with the taste of defeat, the soft-slowness of a man who just wanted to experience what was left to experience. 

“No,” Steve mumbled to himself, into Tony’s mouth. He shifted his weight, up onto an elbow. (And they were in the jet. The _fucking_ jet. In Sokovia.) Tony shifted with him, rolling back without protest. Steve followed. 

His sneaky, greedy hands were sliding forward, ruffling up Tony’s shirt under his arm pits, pressing with just enough pressure to feel good (and what an ordeal learning that had been). “Don’t do me any favors, Tony,” he said.

This was _different_. This wasn’t the echo of his wife. This wasn’t fear of what came next. This was _simple_ ; this was _contained_. It was Steve’s body leaning in against the warmth of another body it liked the feel of. It was two hands gripping his shoulders like they were going to shove him backward or pull him close and hadn’t quite figured it out yet.

Except—

Tony’s fingers slid up into his hair, they gripped it in fists, and the kiss got ugly. It made accusations with teeth and tongue and breath. One of Tony’s hands was fisting his shirt and one of his legs was wrapped around Steve’s back to drag him down, so they were one-against-the-other. 

Steve had to breath and Tony was panting with his head tipped back and his neck exposed. It had been too many hours since either of them shaved, it made the kiss prickly. It made rubbing their cheeks together like sandpaper, fine and abrasive all at once. Steve kissed the edge of Tony’s mouth, and his check and his neck—his body slid down and Tony’s two legs wrapped around him before he could move too far. “I wasn’t leaving,” he mumbled into Tony’s neck.

“I would never assume to know what you were doing,” Tony said with his eyes closed. His hands were Steve’s hair again, threading through it, pushing it up and down until it had to look like a disaster. Steve kissed his neck, and his collar and ducked his head below the roll of his shirts to—

Tony arched, knocked them over. (With more strength, and more agility, that Steve was prepared to counter.) Steve was on his back with Tony’s knees on either side of his waist, looking up at the man that had just been underneath him. (Thinking, this wasn’t such a bad position to be in either.) Tony’s mouth was red, and his shirt was slow-sliding down again. Both his hands were holding Steve in place. “Do you always wake up like this?” Tony asked.

Steve wrapped both his hands around Tony’s thighs and moved him back, off his waist and right into his lap. He’d done it to his wife enough that it was second-nature, he moved without thinking. Only she laughed at him, and called him a barbarian. 

This Tony, he was a fine picture of outrage, leaning forward on his knees so he wasn’t sitting on Steve’s dick (and that was, of course, the entire goal). “Does that move work for you?” he asked.

“Usually she thinks it’s funny,” he said. There were his hands, loose and resting right on Tony’s thighs, feeling them tense beneath his jeans. Every part of him was entirely awake now, entirely present and observant and watching how Tony was watching him. “I didn’t mean to imply anything, it’s just—habit.”

“Well,” Tony countered with one of his hands slipping off Steve’s chest, so he was hovering over him with one hand on the jet’s floor. “I had already made some deductions about your preferences and assumptions.”

“Have you?”

Tony nodded, he wasn’t smiling, but there was something comfortable, something almost at peace in the way he looked at Steve. He kissed him again, just once, just for the length of a breath, and then he sat up. “They’re on their way back, come on. I get this feeling once you get started you don’t quit for a while.”

(Well, not unless he had to.) 

Tony was climbing off his lap, offering a hand to pull Steve up to his feet after him. “What did you base that assumption off of?”

Tony snorted. “Facts.”

# B SIDE

A world away from the one where he belonged, just about as far removed from the Steve he was used to dealing with as any man could get, a few weeks into developing feelings he’d rather not, there was the face he was used to seeing. The exact face of outrage tempered only by an attempt at fairness, sitting crooked on Nettie’s husband’s face. 

Steve was still flat on his back, making looking fuckable as easy as breathing, pulling a disdainfully offended face. It was a flash: there and gone. In the next instant he was rolling up to his feet without taking Tony’s hands, putting on a masterful show of muscle and sinew. When they were both standing, Steve was looking humble, standing close, whispering, “you’re not wrong,” like a filthy, romantic promise about his future plans.

(If any man had ever asked Tony wanted he wanted, what the very most inner, very most selfish part of him wanted, it felt like the only answer there had ever been or would ever be was to take Rogers up on that offer. To stay right here, to live infinitely in the moment when he was _wanted_ as wholly as Steve wanted him at this moment.)

“Time to think with the upstairs brain again,” he said. (To himself, to Steve, to anyone that might listen.) 

Steve’s smile followed his nod and he let the space between them grow. “This the longest I’ve got without sex since I got married,” he said. It was just a fact, just a bit of small talk between pals. (At least the way he said it.) He found a bottle of water and twisted the lid off. “I really didn’t think I’d ever miss it. I mean, I went ninety years and I never really cared. It hadn’t even been four weeks and—”

(I’m thinking about cheating on my wife.)

“I hope you’re decent!” was how Clint announced their return. And his face when they came into view was ever so slightly disappointed to find that they were. 

Natasha was rolling her eyes, following a few steps behind. “We located Wanda. She’s holed up in a church with her brother. According to the local gossip, they think she’s responsible for a few robberies and a couple of minor miracles. Things like fixed roofs and delivering food and medicine. Nothing exactly nefarious.”

“We also found out we missed a few Hydra agents. They’re looking for her too. And they’ve got an advantage that we don’t.”

“How man is a few?” Steve asked.

“Four,” Natasha said, “maybe more. As far as we could tell without engaging them, they haven’t been able to get close enough to her to make any offers. I get the feeling that Strucker wasn’t sharing his successes with the rest of the team. We could use that to our advantage, if she doesn’t trust Hydra entirely, that means there’s a better chance she can be reasoned with.”

“Unless we attack her,” Clint pointed out.

“She attacked first,” Steve said.

Natasha was caught between starting a fight that had no resolution and looking at Tony like she’d expected _better_ of him. (After all she’d done. After suggesting he go the low road, after she’d been right about what would dig under Nettie’s skin deep enough to make her notice, after she’d been so patient. After Natasha had been patient enough to allow it, to not fight him over morality and other people’s husbands and— Here they were, with Clint awkwardly looking at a shelf to his left and Natasha digging her fingertips into her hips and Tony Stark who was Supposed to Control Steve Rogers having failed at his one appointed task.) “We gain nothing by antagonizing her. In a straight fight, we’d lose every time. The dampeners are brand new tech, even if they work—there’s not telling how well they work. We can’t go in there throwing punches.”

“I don’t want to pick sides,” Clint definitely did want to pick a side, “but we did attack first.”

Steve frowned. (It was an inconvenient truth, that they had attacked the base, they had taken the men that Wanda trusted, they had taken everything and declared themselves the Good Guys. It was just unfortunate that the Avengers were also property of Tony fucking Stark, or they might have stood a better chance.) 

“Let me go,” Tony said.

“What?” was Natasha. And Clint. And Steve too.

“Wanda’s not unreasonable.” (That’s what they’d told him, back in his world, when it had been his brain that she scrambled and not Steve’s. Wanda’s not entirely unreasonable. Wanda was being used, being manipulated. She was trying to do good and going about it all wrong.) “She wants the same things we want.” (Look at how he’d become Steve Rogers in a brand new body.) “She wants the war to end, she wants to protect her people— And she’s _angry_. I’ve seen her angrier than any of you can imagine. Let me go, I can show her. I can show her exactly what happens if she keeps going.”

Natasha looked at Steve was too busy staring right at Tony like he couldn’t believe a single word he was hearing. But it was always going to come to this. It was the only way to rewrite his history, to share it with the only person that stood a decent chance of preventing it. 

The Avengers would never have been able to stop Wanda. They couldn’t have contained her. They could _not_ prevent the inevitable. Wanda was a wounded animal, trapped in a cave, desperate to free herself and Hydra had promised her a reckoning.

Wanda wanted blood.

And every action the Avengers could undertake would be viewed as manipulation and escalation.

Tony had a nightmare in his head but it was the nightmare Wanda had given to him. “Come on,” Tony said to Steve. “I can do it. Give the order, Cap. Tell them I can do it.”

Steve had never looked so conflicted to him, so caught up in an internal war of opposing ideals. He had never, ever (not once) looked like he looked just then, as unsure and unsteady as any mortal man. But he said, “alright, Tony. We’ll back your play.” And. “Tell us what you need.”

# A SIDE

(Be careful with her, Steve. She doesn’t love you.) 

Steve’s life had taken on the quality of an escalator, it was propelled forward by a sense of inertia toward a destination he’d picked when he was just a stupid, skinny kid in Brooklyn. Erskine had offered him a chance that Steve had never thought he’d ever get, and he hadn’t even taken a moment to wonder if he’d be happy with anything else. 

But he wouldn’t have been; that’s what he kept thinking when he was a kid. When he sat in waiting rooms listening to the snickers of disbelief. When he stood shirtless with nothing but his fragile bones poking through his thin skin, watching the enlistment officer look down at him like he was the best joke to walk into the office in weeks. Steve could tolerate the idea of being a laughingstock when he was all skin and bones; he could have tolerated anything to get the chance to prove that he was more than he looked like.

And now? Now he was exactly what he looked like. He was strong. He was fast. He was capable of surviving things that killed any other man. 

It just didn’t feel like happiness, walking into the kitchen of the Avenger’s Compound, finding Mrs. Steve Rogers staring down at the coffee running out of the machine into her white mug. With both of her arms wrapped around her body, she was a perfect representation of his every thought. 

Unhappy. Stuck. Unsure. Directionless. Lost.

Steve had lost something when he put that stupid plane in the water. He’d lost the destination he’d picked, but the escalator was still taking him forever onward. Steve had lost his purpose, because he’d set his course to defeating an unjust dictator. He’d planned his life to serve the same fruitless purpose as his father’s. 

Steve had been okay with dying; he’d been less okay with living. He hadn’t _tried_ to make something of his life when he woke up. He’d been coasting by on pats on the back and skirmishes with bad guys like Band-Aids over a deeper wound. He’d been chasing Bucky and his own history with uncomplicated tenacity, hoping to find something to make this life bearable.

That’s what he was right now, for this woman. He was something to make her stay in their world _bearable_. 

“So,” he heard himself say, “how’s this work?”

“The coffee machine?” Tony asked without looking up. “You put hot water in the to—”

Steve didn’t smile when she glanced at him. She didn’t seem surprised to find his disapproving frown. When she turned to face him, her skirt swished around her knees. It was deep-red and _thin_ , bouncing around her thighs and gripping her waist. The buttons across her breasts were pulled open far enough to show the top arch of the arc reactor in her chest. “Sex for the sake of it,” Steve said. 

“I thought I was being very educational,” she said. One of her arms was resting on the counter and the other was hanging at her side, leaving him all the room he’d ever need to put his hands wherever he might want. 

“Do I ask?”

Tony tipped her head, she didn’t smile, she didn’t show him where to put his hands. She was as unsettled as he was, caught up in the same stupid inertia. For her, there was no way out, there was no answer as to why she was here or when she could go home. For Steve, he had answers he didn’t want. (Scientific proof that he’d survived because of the serum, that there was no greater purpose or higher power, but a man-made mutation that allowed him to survive.) Steve _was_ home; Steve could do anything he wanted. 

He just had to figure out what he wanted.

“Do I always have to wait for you to ask first?” Steve asked.

“No,” Tony whispered. She was breathing so shallowly that he could barely see her chest move, and his hands slid around her waist in time with her eyes sliding closed. His fingers curled up in the length of her skirt, pulling it higher and higher up the back of her thighs. Her head tipped forward again, eyes closed, whispering, “and they say Captain America never had a dirty thought in his life.”

Steve didn’t need dirty thoughts when he had dirty memories, left over visions of growing up watching Bucky’s wandering heart and good-boy-good-looks get him whatever woman was willing. He’d seen the way Bucky touched women, how he fucked them when he wasn’t looking for anything but a few minutes and a satisfying end. 

“It’s the kitchen,” Tony said. 

Steve’s fingers were under the rolled-up length of her skirt, slipping one-two fingers under the waistband of her panties to push them down. “Nobody’s coming.”

Tony’s hand grabbed his arm just above his bent elbow. Her cheeks were flushed pink, she looked at him with that perfect defiance that didn’t match with how she kissed him at all. She kissed him like she’d already agreed, like she’d never heard any better idea in her life. Her hands dropped to her waist, directly contradicting, “we can’t do this in the kitchen.”

“There’s a pantry.” 

That might have still been considered the kitchen, but one of his busy hands had slid right between her thighs. She was wet when he touched her, her breath was an eager agreement with all his plans. “Shit,” she whispered to herself, with both her fists gripping the open edges of his zipper, pushing his pants down toward his knees. They didn’t move more than a centimeter, before she said, “where’s the pantry?”

They shuffled around a corner and through a door. She kissed him with desperate approval for how well she’d taught him to touch her. It had been a revelation in her bed; it had been a privilege. But in the pantry, it felt like a mockery.

“Turn around,” Steve said when his lips were rubbed pink by hers. She didn’t protest, didn’t fight, didn’t say a damn word. Her body was all up against his, spinning around like he’d asked. Her skirt was a nuisance rolled up over the small of her back. 

It was as perfectly impersonal in this pantry, his hips slapping against her perfect ass, as it had been in her kitchen. He wasn’t fucking her for the pleasure of it, for any specific desire he had, but because he wanted something to make it _bearable_.

“Steve,” she panted, both of her arms braced on a shelf. The cans and the boxes were shaking in their spots, dancing in time with the thrusts of his hips. She was desperate and close, grabbing at his wrist with one of her hands. His fingers were holding onto her waist, thinking that—

Thinking that—

Thinking the whole disaster was one big stupid mistake. But, orgasms weren’t bad.

# A SIDE

Tony didn’t make resolutions, but she did make observations. Even an oblivious man could have seen the disaster she’d made of Steve Rogers. They were strangers standing in a kitchen together, Steve working through having enacted the antithesis of everything he stood for and—

“Its different when you love someone,” she said.

Steve closed the fridge without getting anything. He was as guilty as any grown man could get. “I don’t,” the defeat in those words made any that followed them almost pointless. Steve Rogers just did not. He didn’t have sex in kitchens. He didn’t have sex with other men’s wives. He didn’t have sex with Tony Stark. He just didn’t. “Know what’s the right thing to do in this situation.” 

“Is there always a right thing to do?” Tony asked.

“I think there was a right thing to do before we started. I don’t know what the right thing is _now_. Even if we stop, we’ve already done it. It doesn’t change that you slept with me and I slept with a married woman.”

No. No it didn’t.

“Tony was trying to tell you something, right? That’s what you said? That he was using your love for your husband to try to tell you something? I don’t think this is what he meant to say.”

In her world, she had hated her husband with such a passion that it had consumed her, and then she had loved him without ever having taken a moment to wonder when she’d changed her mind. It felt like Steve had been the only thing on her miserable planet that could make her _feel_ anything at all. Without him, her days were monotony. Without him, her life was gray. Without him, she had lost the compass by which she’d steered her life.

Everything had been done by rote.

Tony sighed, “if you don’t want to—”

“I do want to,” Steve said. It was absolutely true. She didn’t even need the soreness and the muscle memory and the sticky feeling on her thighs as proof. It was all there in his voice. He _wanted_ to. (Everyone knew that Captain America would never tell a lie.) “I just. I just don’t know what kind of person that makes me.”

“Just a person,” Tony said. 

They parted awkwardly. Tony took her cold coffee back to Hill’s office to keep up pretenses, and she worked on the problem of publicity until it was time to quit. When she was alone in the car she’d picked to drive, she rubbed her fingers across the new bruises Steve had left on her waist. They were shallow, unpainful things. 

But there she was, sitting in her car, with tears in her eyes. There she was, face-to-face with what _Mr_. Stark had been trying to make her feel. What he’d been screaming through the void all these days.

It was _agony_ , like a spasm that came from her _bones_. It was _breath-stealing_ , it was _ice_ and _fire_ all at once pulling her down. 

(Be brave, her Mother always said, be brave little one.)

There was no bravery in despair. There was no bravery in Tony’s borrowed car. No bravery in her hands tight grip, of her forehead against the wheel. No bravery in her hitching lungs, in her scalded throat, in—

She was _alone_ ; well and truly, completely and _totally_ alone. 

That was what _Mr._ Stark had been screaming at her; that she had a home and that this wasn’t it, and that her home was willing to do whatever it took to get her home. That the man she wasn’t was willing to do anything to bring her back to people that loved her. 

_His_ despair was encompassing; his _agony_ was a great dark void. It was layered into his message, it was coded into his repeated attempts to seduce her husband. He didn’t _yearn_ for this place he’d left, but he had given up everything that made his life bearable anyway.

Tony hadn’t planned to drive to Pepper’s apartment. She hadn’t intended to invite herself into the building, right past security and into an elevator. She hadn’t practiced what she’d say when the door opened. (Maybe she should have.) Instinct had brought her here. “Pepper,” she said as soon as the door opened.

Pepper didn’t slam the door. She didn’t invite Tony in. She stood in the open space half-wearing her nice clothes, saying nothing at all. 

“I’m sorry.”

Pepper didn’t nod, she didn’t smile, she didn’t speak. She just stepped back and closed the door.

# B SIDE

The church was exactly how he remembered it, minus the megalomaniac murder bot infestation. It was a standing testament to the potential of this alternate world. 

“I heard you were looking for me,” Tony said. It echoed like a shout through the broken church. It bounced off splintered pews, knocked against crumbling walls, landed on the debris that covered the floor. 

Pietro had _not_ been standing right in front of him, and then he was. A gust of wind followed after, giving a sense of drama to a scene that really didn’t require any. He was taller than his sister but he couldn’t approach the level of intimidation that Wanda commanded. She had a glow of power around her that was _unsettling_. Pietro was just a kid with a smart mouth, looking at him with narrow eyes and disbelief. “I think you’re wrong,” he said.

“I’m not,” Tony assured him. “You see,” he looked sideways, toward a shadow with a pink-rimmed glow. “I know a lot about you. We’ve met before,” he glanced back at Pietro and his quickly failing patience. “You told me all about your quest—can I call it a quest?—to save Sokovia, to get justice for what happened to your family. To what happened to a lot of families here.”

“Who are you?” There was Wanda, stepping forward, out of the shadows that she’d bent to cover her. Her fingers were shimmering in the quiet darkness of the church. Her boots scraped on the broken things surrounding them. “We have never met before.”

“Sure, we have,” he said. Last time he’d been this close to her, this confrontational with her, he’d been wearing an armored weapon that surrounded his whole body like a shield and even then, he’d known she could crush him like a bug. It was a new experience like this. “I’m Tony Stark.”

Pietro snorted. “Tony Stark is a woman.”

“I admit,” he conceded, “I’m having an identity crisis. I _am_ Tony Stark. I’m just not the Tony Stark that belongs here. I’m from a universe a few doors over,” he thumbed over his shoulder with no notion of how alternate universes even interacted with each other. “I’m from a place where we’ve met already. It’s a lot like this place, except it wasn’t Steve Rogers you met at the castle, Wanda. It was me.”

“You’re lying,” Pietro snapped.

But Wanda was watching him, creeping forward without confidence. “Why would I believe you?”

“I know all about you,” he said. “I know that your family was killed in a bombing, I know that you were trapped in the wreckage. I know that it was my bomb, that you waited and waited for it to detonate, that you grew up determined to get revenge for what my weapons did to you. I know all about it, Wanda—and I know,” he flinched when Pietro moved but he didn’t _stop_ , “that you _don’t_ really want the end all that anger brings you to.”

“You do not know what I want.”

“Don’t I?” he said. And this was the important part, the most important part. “Take a look,” he motioned at his head, “I know you can. Look at what you left in my head, look at where it took us.”

“Wanda,” Pietro whispered. It was a strange, quiet, gentle warning. The sort of thing that passed between siblings with more understood weight than could be interpreted by only children. It made her halt, but it didn’t make her stop. “What if he is lying?”

“I would know,” Wanda said. She was just a few feet in front of him, that glow around her hands getting bright as her eyes started bleeding into pink fire. Tony hadn’t had the benefit of seeing it last time, he hadn’t had a chance to take a breath to _prepare_ himself but this time. Oh, this time, he saw her hand as it lifted, he felt the brush of the energy as it touched him, he closed his eyes as it dragged him down.

Having his brain ripped open was still (somewhat) of a new sensation; it was an experience that he couldn’t pilot. Memory was like that, as unreliable as tabloids, always giving you some version of someone’s idea of truth. Tony had thought he would steer them straight-away right to the destruction that Wanda-and-Ultron-and- _Tony_ had made. Like a brief, and useful, cautionary tale he had assumed they would need no more than a moment.

But, they opened their eyes in a sandy place, Tony laying up against a rock and Wanda crouching just behind him. The rain of gunfire in the not-so-distant distance was louder in memory than it had been in reality. The whistle of warning was ominous when he was listening for it and the thud-thud of his heart was harder, faster now that he knew the cost of what happened next. Wanda, behind him, didn’t seem to care much about the bomb with Tony’s name on it landing right in front of them. She said, “why are we here?”

The bomb detonated but the explosion never came, instead they were standing next to a crater where a church had once been. It was mid-event, with dirt and debris and things like cars and buildings were falling all around them. The sound was deafening, the scream of the earth and of the people that poor Cap and all his morals couldn’t save, it all came together in a horrific symphony of tragedy in progress. 

No so far to their left, a power line was dancing along the ground, sizzling and snapping as it whipped back and forth. Wanda was looking upward into the shower of dirt. When she looked at him, the pink rings around her irises seemed brighter in the dimness. “How?” she asked, but not _what_.

Tony turned, thinking the move would rewind the tape, would take them to the moment when she’d stepped up behind him in a castle, the moment she’d put his brain in a chokehold and left him with a freshly aggravated sense of fear. But turning brought them to a narrow tunnel, to another scene of gunfire in the distance. 

There was no Mark I to protect him from gunfire, no narrow slits to see through, no enormous metal suit for him to drag along. It was only his naked skin (metaphorically) and Yinsen’s bloody body laying where it had fallen. “No,” he said before he could remember it was only a memory, “no,” as he dove forward, as his hands pressed against the wounds that would never be closed. Yinsen’s face was forgiving and that was the hell of it, the way he looked at Tony was like a promise of better days to come. Yinsen was going home, fading out of light and life, to find relief from the circumstances of living. Tony was left behind with a directive to do better and the promise of absolution.

Work Hard. Redeem Yourself. 

“No!” Tony shouted at the memory that wouldn’t give.

“Was he your first?” Wanda asked. The edge of her voice was smug, was _superior_. Like a bully laughing at a boy shoved in a locker, she found amusement in his fruitless desperation. “Or just the first you cared about?”

Tony fell back, onto his ass, in a shimmering in-between place. It wasn’t real but it wasn’t a memory, it just _was_. “He was my friend,” he said with his head tipped back far enough to see her face. 

Wanda had no sympathy for him, “I have lost count of the friends I have buried because of you, Stark.”

Tony dragged himself back up to his feet, he matched her heartless stare with his own. He _summoned_ the dead like a dread pulled from the base of his gut. He filled his memory and the _gray_ space with it. Until it played around them like a kaledescope. 

To his left, the vision of Hulk attacking Johannesburg. The screaming of men-and-women (who had done _nothing_ ) as they ran for their lives. The crack of the building as it split around their bodies, the resounding smack of impact when Hulk hit the ground, when he finally faded from green-to-human skin. 

To his right, Wanda in the shadows of a gun smuggler’s ship, full of righteous words to cover the story of her own unanswerable quest for vengeance. 

In front, behind, in all the spaces between them, the sights-and-sounds and overwhelming smells of Ultron’s endgame. The thinness of the air rising out of the memory to choke them both. The creak and the scratch of the clones crawling across the ground like a great army, rising up to destroy any man that dared to endanger the vision Ultron had for their future. 

They were standing in a mirage, the side of a road, when the dust cleared and Pietro’s last expression was almost a smile. As the gray of his suit filled out red in starbursts and the raw, burnt edges of his skin were brilliantly visible. 

_You didn’t see that coming, did you_.

And Wanda’s scream brought them back to _now_ , to a church in a place that had not yet been destroyed. Her fury was bright-pink-and-red, a great swelling of power and intent matched only by the confused suddenness of Pietro’s motion.

Tony’s legs gave out, he landed on his knees, looking up at her. “I thought I could protect them,” he said. “I thought I could protect all of us, and I couldn’t. I thought I could change my legacy, I thought I could change things—and I can’t. Nothing I ever do will bring back your parents, Wanda. I’ve got nothing but blood on my hands, but,” he sighed, “there’s a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do. You still have a choice, Wanda. You still have a chance.”

That’s all he wanted to say, in the end. That’s all he wanted.

# B SIDE

“You going to keep it together, Rogers?” Natasha had asked them when they took their positions. It was a funny question to ask _now_. Not because she hadn’t ever thought it before, and not because she didn’t have reasons to think it now. No, it was funny because in all the years they’d worked together, and of all the times that his wife had put herself into unnecessary danger, not one of the others had ever asked him.

Steve could feel the instability in his chest, like a cracked bone that hadn’t been set. He just hadn’t thought it was obvious enough that anyone could see it. His wife was all hard edges, wrapped up in an impenetrable shell, and even when he was _worried_ , he wasn’t worried the same. Steve’s wife was never defenseless; she would never have allowed herself to be.

“I’ve got it,” he said like he believed it. 

That was before Tony’s knees hit the ground; before the sound he made like a long-long-low-exhale. A death-rattle of sorts. Steve moved like instinct, without thought, ducking out of the hiding place and landing right in line of sight. He could almost hear Natasha’s voice sighing, “damn it,” with resignation. 

Wanda was powering up for a strike, Pietro was a blur of motion that ended with his arm around his sister’s body and his back to Tony. Tony was on the ground, wilting in place on his knees, looking up at her with compassion that Steve couldn’t bring himself to mirror.

Wanda was just a kid, said the man. She was just doing what she thought was best. She was being used. She was—

Screaming. “I should kill you! You are the bringer of death, a man who made a fortune from a pile of corpses! Your death would bring me no agony, it would not _hurt_ me.” She was trying to shrug off her brother as he held on, wide-eye and confused. “You deserve this from me!”

Steve’s boots slid in the loose rocks littered around the church, he came to a stop between Tony’s defenseless stare and Wanda’s hot-pink-rage. The shield might not do a damn thing against the sort of magic that Wanda had but it provided a barrier and barriers did tend to slow things down. “I can’t let you do that,” Steve said. Tony sagged forward behind him, his forehead hit the back of Steve’s legs, one of his hands cupped around his leg. 

“You think you could stop me?” Wanda asked.

“I think I could try.” There were tears on Wanda’s face, they were filling up her eyes as she stared at him. Her rage was sustained on a knife’s point, held in place by the agony that fueled revenge like hers. Steve could see how young she was like that, how lost she was in the world, how vulnerable she must have been and unprepared for the lies that HYDRA offered as promises. “But I didn’t come here for a fight.”

Pietro was frowning at him. “Then why did you bring a weapon?”

“It’s a shield,” Steve said. “We want to help.” (No he didn’t. That was the trouble. Steve didn’t want to help this woman, this _child_ at all. He had no charitable parts left in his body. He had no doubt left to extend. He was regurgitating things that Tony had promised him were true, but he couldn’t make it sound like he believed them.)

Wanda was smart enough to know a threat when one was standing in front of her. She let her hands drop to her sides, she stared at him with disbelief. “What help could you offer me? What lies have you come to tell me?”

“No lies,” Steve said. “Hydra’s the one that’s been lying to you, Wanda. Whatever they told you, it’s not true.”

“Why should we believe you?” Pietro demanded. “You sleep with a murderer.”

Steve didn’t bother to dispute the claim. He watched Wanda’s face, watched her staring back at him with a twist of curiosity in the tilt of her head. Tony was groaning little painful sounds behind him, working himself back up to standing. “We can help you, if you want to do what’s best for Sokovia—we can help you get rid of the last of Hydra. That’s all we want.”

“And if we don’t want your _help_?” Wanda asked. Her stare shifted, fell away from meeting Steve’s to watch Tony struggle to stand. There was no joy in the twitch of her lips upwards into a smile.

“Ultron wanted to destroy the world,” Tony said. “You didn’t know that’s what he wanted when you helped him. But you helped him, you protected him from us when we came to stop him.” Tony was on his own feet, putting on the appearance of strength, staring back at Wanda without flinching. “You saw how it ended.”

Steve shifted his grip on the shield from one hand to the next. Tony was wavering on his feet, putting all his energy into keeping up the confrontation. “We’re outside the city, you’ll find us in the forest. We hope you come as an ally.” He slid his arm under Tony’s, and around his back. He turned them around.

“And if I don’t come as an ally?”

Steve paused at the door, looked over his shoulder, “then you’re not an ally.” (An enemy, and Steve had a hundred good excuses for how to deal with enemies.) He turned back and retreated, out of the church and right into a stolen car with Natasha looking impatient and harassed in the driver’s seat. Clint was holding open the back door.

“I’m fine,” Tony said as if he weren’t going to fall over as soon as Steve let him go. Between the three of them, they got Tony into the car, and Steve slid in next to him, banging the shield against his legs as he went. Once the door was closed, Tony was leaning against his side, sighing, “good job, Cap. You did good.” 

Natasha’s face in the rearview mirror was accusing Steve of something he had no defense for, but she didn’t say a word.

# A SIDE

Steve found Natasha eating the apple pie in the dining room. She had a fork and no plate, just the pie dish and a napkin she used to wipe her mouth. “Your new girlfriend makes a good pie,” she said. 

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Natasha licked the sticky-sweet-syrup off the fork. It seemed an endless repeat of _I told you so’s_ were going to pour right out of her mouth. They were going to fill up the whole room from the bottom to the top and drown them both in aggressive resentment. But, she considered the fork, and the emptiness of the room. “I really thought our Tony was a pain in the ass.” Her face cracked into a smile that had no joy in it. 

“Everyone did.”

Sam walked into the dining room with two glasses of milk, a plate under his arm and a fork clenched between his teeth. He looked disappointed to see Steve there, but all he said when he got the fork out of his mouth was, “you don’t eat apple pie, right?”

“No,” Steve agreed. (The only thing more American than apple pie was Steve Rogers eating Apple Pie!) 

Natasha let Sam steal the pie pan to cut himself (half the pie) a piece that he slid onto his plate with minimal finesse. She watched for a breath before turning her attention back to him. “Ultron was still a dumb fucking idea,” she said to follow up the first statement, “but, it was only a dumb fucking idea because it blew up. What if it had worked? What if he had harnessed the stone’s power and made—”

“Vision?” Steve suggested.

Natasha frowned at him.

“I thought he did make Vision,” Sam put in. He slid the pie pan back over to Natasha who took it with no sense of modesty and resumed eating what remained. 

“He did,” Steve said. “Mostly? Bruce and Thor helped.”

“Ultron went bad. And Tony can piss off anyone, even on a good day but—” Natasha paused there, lingered half in and half out of verbalizing the thought bouncing back and forth between them all. 

“He liked the team,” Sam suggested. “I never worked with the guy, but this is a really fancy house he built. I’ve still got like a hundred and six more pages to read in the manual for the upgrades he did on my suit? FRIDAY,” he pointed upward at the ceiling. “That’s cool.”

“He never attacked me,” Steve suggested. 

“I get the feeling,” Natasha said, “like Mrs. Rogers is less concerned with the fate of the world and more concerned with the fate of this team. Her team must run like clockwork, they must be perfect as much effort as she says she’s put into them. But I get the feeling, and maybe I’m wrong, that she’s nowhere near our Tony. That he’s years and years of development ahead of her. Who knows what the fuck he’s going to figure out next?”

“Magic, probably,” Sam said.

Steve sighed. “I never thought I’d ever say it, but I miss him.”

Natasha was nodding and Sam, sitting to her left, was just looking at the two of them like they were insane. With a mouth half-full of apple pie he couldn’t immediately speak, it took two gulps of milk and almost a beat too long before he said, “I hope you didn’t sprain something just now. What happens when I walk out of the room? Do you sit in here and talk about how you might miss me if I weren’t around? A valuable, useful, loyal member of the team goes missing for four weeks before someone admits that he might have been useful? That maybe it would be okay if he were back? You’re really going to sit here, acting like this is the first time you’ve ever thought the Avengers might be better off with Tony Stark?”

“You haven’t worked with him,” Natasha said.

“I hadn’t worked with Captain America either, but that damn sure didn’t stop me from thinking: this is a guy I want on my team.”

“Sam,” Steve said (before it could escalate). “Whatever else he might be, Tony Stark is a giant pain in the ass. If you’d ever had a six-minute conversation with him, you’d know that.” (Natasha was grinning behind her hand over her mouth.) “But, I wish— But, we could have tried harder. All of us, we could have been a better team.”

Natasha didn’t agree, didn’t nod, just dropped her hand away from her mouth and turned the pie pan in a half circle. “He’ll be back,” she said. “I got this feeling in my gut. He’ll figure it out.”

“Why would want to come back?” Steve asked. “The way she tells it, there’s a perfect team over there. He’s got his house, JARVIS, a husband— What does he have here? Not us, no his house, not JARVIS, no even a girlfriend,” (thanks to Steve), “why would he want to come home?”

“Because that’s who he is,” Natasha said. “It doesn’t matter what happens to him. Something’s broken and he has to fix it.”

No matter the cost.


	29. Chapter 29

# B SIDE

Tony had expected a nightmare, but he woke up on a lounge chair instead. With his eyes closed and the artificial sunshine warming his skin, he could almost convince himself this wasn’t its own sort of nightmare. Maybe he’d get a drink from the cabana, maybe he’d take a walk along the shore. 

Tony didn’t want to look at her, at Antionetta Stark who had organized her world so perfectly she’d avoided every mistake that he hadn’t. No, he had no desire to look at that arrogance hiding behind her familiar face; how she looked at him the same way he stared at himself in the mirror. (Well, what else can we fuck up today? No better ideas? No good ideas at all?) Tony was exhausted by the effort of dragging his body through the world, one day at a time, trying and trying to find greener pastures and a safe place to sleep but Nettie—

Oh well.

Good old Nettie was a cyclone, she was a natural disaster chewing through landscape, rearranging everything she crossed however it best suited her whims. Nettie didn’t give one half a micro-shit about the fallout. 

(Or maybe that was unkind. Maybe she cared. Maybe she just didn’t care enough.) 

“I tried,” Nettie said beyond his closed eyes. “I drove out, I saw Pepper, I told her that I was sorry—I thought, I thought I could make her believe it.”

Tony opened his eyes then, rolled up to sitting. He couldn’t put his legs off the side of the chair, there was no ground to rest his feet on. So, he crossed them in front of him, he looked at her regretful face, verging onto something like genuine guilt. “That’s really generous of you,” he said. “It’s only been—four? Five? Days since you let her walk in on you and Steve. I’m sure she’s ready to forgive you now. I’m sure she understands why you were fucking Steve in the first place.”

“She doesn’t need to forgive me,” Nettie said. “Whatever I did—it wasn’t meant to hurt her, it wasn’t _about_ her. I don’t owe her anything.”

“You owed it to me,” he said.

Nettie’s arrogance was as solid as her husband’s shield. It shimmered when it was attacked, like a glossy look to her eyes, and a twitch at the edge of her mouth. This was a woman who had succeeded where Tony had failed. She’d found a new purpose in her life, she’d built a wall strong enough to separate her demons from her soul. “Why?” she whispered, “because we’re the same person? Because you saved Sokovia? Because you _haven’t_ fucked my husband yet?”

Yes. Yes, to all things. “Because she was important,” Tony said. “Because they were all important, because they weren’t _yours_.”

“They weren’t yours either,” she said.

No, they weren’t. They weren’t friends, they weren’t co-workers, they had only ever been a team out of necessity. They hadn’t had secret meetings standing outside jets in foreign countries, whispering their concerns to one another. They didn’t have containment rooms for just-in-cases. They didn’t have worst-case-scenario plans. But they were still _Tony_ ’s, they were his responsibility. He’d given them a home, and he’d given them tools, and— 

“I hate your world,” Nettie said, “I hate this feeling in my stomach, this growling pit, that I can’t get rid of. I hate the distrust, and the confrontation, and the disdain that runs through your team. I hate the way they follow me with their eyes everywhere I go, like they think I might steal something off an unprotected shelf.” She sighed. “I protected my home. I protected my team. I was happy.”

“I’m trying to be sad for you,” (Well, whoever had said that Tony Stark was a dick might have had a point.) “But you burnt down my house and now you’re crying about the smoke in your eyes. You now what I don’t get, _Nettie_. You know what I can’t figure out?” He paused long enough to catch a breath, to see her tense, “if you were so happy, if my world was so terrible, why aren’t back yet?”

“I was trying—”

Tony snorted, “maybe I should tell your husband. Sorry Steve, I know you love her, and I know you want her back, but she’s been fucking the guy with your face that isn’t you because it’s too hard to be sad. You’re a _coward_.” (All Starks were dicks, it seemed.) “You’d rather do anything than face the fact that you’re scared. That you have been scared ever since you woke up in that cave— I may _not_ be perfect but boy do I know that. You have no idea; you’ve built an alternate world around yourself, you have everyone agreeing that they’ve never met a smarter, better, more dedicated woman in the world. But you fucked up, Nettie. Because you had one number one cheerleader in this alternate reality you made, and you pissed him off.” He took a breath, “I don’t know a lot about Steve Rogers, but I do know that people who piss him off don’t generally make it very far in this world.”

“Leave Steve alone,” Nettie hissed at him, just like any snake might. Her forked tongue behind her teeth and her knuckles turning white from the pressure of her curled fists, she was as dangerous as a newborn kitten, as frightening as a puddle of water. 

“He doesn’t want me,” Tony said. “He just wants to hurt you.”

Nettie rolled her eyes with tears gathering at her eyelashes, she scoffed, “that’s a lot of high level thought you’re assigning to Steve’s decision making.” Her anger was breaking, her cheeks were pinking, she said, “please don’t hurt him.”

“Fix your shit,” Tony hissed back at her. “Put my world back together. Because, Nettie, I’m close to figuring this out.” (Was he, he hadn’t realized that.) His hand motioned to the side, and the sand glittered under the chairs, it ran straight down the coast, to the water with all that beautiful sunlight glinting off it. It came as easy as a thought, as easily as breathing. “And you’re _not_.”

# A SIDE

She’d fallen asleep in the lab, leaning back in the chair with perfect lower-back support, watching the same numbers cycle over and over again on the screen. She’d memorized temperature variations, star alignments, traffic patterns—she knew all the facts by heart. 

But Nettie (that’s what he called her, with just enough awareness to know it was meant to be mean) hadn’t figured out how to access the bridge between the worlds. No, she hadn’t even figured out there was one. 

(You don’t have to be so hard, her husband liked to say. You don’t always have to be so strong.)

This whole stupid world seemed like a testament to the fact that she _did_. Every one of Mr. Stark’s failings had seemed (in those first, blinding seconds-minutes-hours-days-and now _weeks_ ) had been another confirmation of the most basic truth she’d ever learned. Never-ever give an inch. Never-ever let them see you flinch.

Every man and woman in this world had seen Anthony Stark flinch. The whole of the Avengers was aware of his short-comings. They knew about his fears. They knew his weaknesses. They gave in to his anxiety, they were gracious about letting him build their gear. (Oh-so-perfectly gracious.) They let him walk away when they should have asked him to stay.

Nettie had seen it as an insult, because it _felt_ like an insult. In her world, the Avengers saw her as a leader. Her husband treated her like an equal. They assumed she was the front that she put on; they wouldn’t have believed any man that tried to tell her she was anything but. 

But.

But, Nettie hadn’t found the bridge. She _had_ been looking and she hadn’t found it.

Nettie’s rage had destroyed Tony’s home. She’d burnt his home to the foundation, she’d reduced his accomplishments to smoldering ash. Like the other people that lived in this terrible place, she’d treated him as an inconvenient necessity. She’d assumed he was valueless; she hadn’t _cared_ what he wanted. 

_Fix your shit_.

“FRIDAY,” she said.

“Boss?”

“Open a file, we’re going to make a sparring suit.” Nettie had gone about it all wrong, four weeks ago, when she woke up in a bed that wasn’t hers. She hadn’t made adjustments to her assumptions; she hadn’t factored in all the variables. 

Steve was an asshole, but nobody had ever asked him not to be. Mr. Stark had made do with what he was given because he had no reason to think anything could be changed. Time and repeated trials had taught him to accept the people and improve the tech. He had gotten caught in a trap of proving his worth through what he was willing to give. Nettie couldn’t fix the mess that Mr. Stark had made for himself, but she _could_ put back together the things she’d broken.

(Maybe.)

“Show me the Captain America suits—put them on the screen.”

# A SIDE

Steve hadn’t slept through the door opening; he just hadn’t reacted to the creak of the hinges. There would have been an alarm if someone without clearance had gotten into the compound. Rhodey wouldn’t have entered his room without knocking. Sam wouldn’t have come in at all. Natasha may have tried to sneak in, but she wouldn’t have had such loud footsteps once the door was open.

Hill was an unknown, but Steve generally believed that Maria Hill was only tolerating them because Fury had asked her to. There was no reason for her to invite herself into his bedroom, and that was why it was the very opposite of a surprise to open his eyes and see Mrs. Tony fucing Stark looking down at him. She wasn’t dressed in a pretty dress, but something skin-tight and utilitarian. That sort of outfit that Tony always wore under the Iron Man armor. “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” she said.

“That’s original,” he answered. 

She was carrying a case, it was weighing down her whole left side of her body, knocking against her thigh as she smiled at him with some humor. Her hand lifted to grab the strap of a bag hanging off her right side and she hoisted it and dropped it on his stomach with that same mean-spirited smile. “Get dressed.”

The bag weighed much-much more than she’d made it look like. It hit him like a fist, knocking out enough of his breath that his gasp of “ _what_?” sounded must more labored than it felt. He shoved his elbow against the bed as she retreated six steps. The bag had the STARK logo on the side, he unzipped it far enough to see the familiar dark-dark blue of the tactical uniform. “What is this?” he repeated.

“My husband calls it his spandex safety suit,” she pulled a chair away from the desk across the room and invited herself to sit in it. The red-and-silver case she was carrying dropped on the floor like a great pile of bricks. (Or an entire suit of armor folded precisely into place.) “It had an official name once, probably. But Spandex Safety Suit is hard to beat as far as names go. It’s lightweight, it absorbs and redistributes moderate levels of impact to minimize superficial injuries.”

(It was times like this when Steve rolled his eyes at his Tony, when that creeping sensation of being condescended to filled up his guts until all he could feel was an edge of annoyance that made everything more _difficult_. It was the time when he said _English_ like he couldn’t have figured it out and Tony looked at him like an imbecile.) “So,” he kicked the blankets off, so he could put his feet on the floor, “when you hit me it won’t bruise?”

“Yes,” Tony said. “It doesn’t work with Thor. My husband don’t care, because he lasted sixty-five seconds in a fight against the God of Thunder and it’s all he talked about for six weeks. I said, it’s not a good idea Steve. Thor can match Hulk, Steve. Thor is a _god_ , Steve. But you’re incredibly stubborn.”

“I find that funny coming from someone with Stark as a last name.” Steve pulled the suit out, ran his fingers across the sleeve. It felt thick, and stretchy, and not necessarily special in anyway. “What exactly are you proposing we do? What’s the case?”

“The case,” she kicked her foot against it, “is a lightweight sparring suit. It does the same thing your spandex outfit does.”

“This didn’t work out the last time we tried it,” Steve said. “I woke up in a hospital bed, you woke up in a jail cell.”

Tony leaned back in the chair, pulled her leg up to cross it at the knee and tapped her fingers against the armrest. She was thinking about the statement, or she wasn’t, letting her stare linger on him while she sorted out everything she wanted to say. (And it was annoying, to be studied, but less annoying than that habit of hers to say the first mean thing she thought of.) After a pause, she let out a breath and said, “this isn’t the same kind of fight, Steve. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t have a weaponized suit. You don’t have any illusions of how we can settle this politely.”

It was a _bad_ idea. It was such a _bad_ idea. Steve set the suit off to the side, over the rumpled blankets he hadn’t been ready to abandon yet. “What is _this_?”

“I don’t know,” was like admitting defeat. It was the most _human_ she had seemed since the moment she showed up like a vengeful act of God the first day. This wasn’t the woman that snapped the bones in his arm like twigs. There was no certainty in her words, no rigid righteousness in her body. No, this was a Tony more like the man that Steve knew best. It was just a woman, with an idea, testing out the waters. “I think he’s going to figure it out first. That puts me in a bad position, doesn’t it, Steve? If he knows how to get back, and I don’t, and all I have to offer him is the empty bed I made for him? Why would he come back?”

Because he had to. Because no matter the cost, Tony Stark could always be counted on to do what needed to be done. (Funny how Steve hadn’t thought that was true four-weeks-ago. Funny how Tony had been an annoyance and a liability. Funny how that changed.) Steve sighed, “how is this supposed to help?”

“Well,” she smiled, “we’ve got some things to settle.” 

It was just _such_ a bad idea. “We need a referee.”

# B SIDE

Steve heard her before he saw her. The underbrush was thick enough that even someone as practiced as Natasha would have had a tough time sneaking through it. Wanda wasn’t a professional assassin; she hadn’t been trained to be soundless. She hadn’t been trained to be anything. 

Wanda came through the forest the way anyone might have, stepping across twigs and piles of leaves, snapping and crunching as she went. She came without concern at what she would find, rounding a thick spot of trees to find Steve waiting for her. She carried no weapon (but she didn’t need one); she stood in front of him _alone_. 

Steve could see how young she was, removed of all emotion and taste for vengeance, he could see that she was just the kid that Tony kept repeating she was. He wasn’t blinded by her youth; he could see the _fury_ that HYDRA had seen. Her allegiance was undecided, her mind wasn’t made up. She hadn’t come to make peace; regardless of what she’d seen—she’d come with a taste of blood in her mouth. “Where’s your brother?” Steve asked.

“Around,” Wanda said. “Where are your,” there was a slight pause, a dip of silence, “coworkers?” 

“Nearby,” Steve said. He’d left them behind, the way he’d left behind the shield. Neither the team nor the shield was going to do him a damn bit of good against Wanda if she decided she wanted a fight. But Natasha would protect Tony, and Clint stood a better chance against a man that moved like a blur than he did against another unknown with mind control powers.

“I felt your nightmare,” Wanda said. “I saw the things you saw—all the dead behind you. You ask me to trust you, but I’ve seen inside your mind.”

“You saw what I’m afraid of, not what I am.”

“What you could be,” Wanda insisted. “I watched them clear the bodies out of the snow at the castle. I saw the trucks when they left. I listened for news of the attack on the radio and I heard nothing— ”

“Wanda.” Steve had been a great deal of things in his life. He’d lived through more than he could have imagined at twelve-years-old. He had killed more people that he could remember; some of them as close to him as his own skin and some at great distances, caught in explosions and building collapses. Steve wasn’t haunted by the dead. “I don’t have to justify my actions to you. I didn’t come here to argue about what I’ve done.”

“I know why you came.” Wanda stayed by the trees, across the clearing, speaking only loudly enough that she could be heard. She stared at him now the way she had in the castle, as if he were the next-best-thing to the woman she really wanted to hurt. “You say one thing and you think another. I see it in your face. You do not want peace. You do not want to _help_.”

“Personally?” Steve said. “No. I don’t.”

That made her uneasy; for all the advantages she had, there was still that sense of fear at the words. 

“But, it’s the right thing to do. Maybe you’re just a kid, maybe you were taken advantage of—you just wanted to help your country. I know what that feels like,” he motioned at his own chest, “I let them experiment on me, I didn’t hesitate. I did whatever I had to do to make sure I could help. Maybe that’s what they told you, that you would be able to help the people that mattered to you, that you could end the war.” 

Wanda said nothing, she gritted her teeth. 

“Stopping HYDRA is the right thing to do,” Steve said. He looked sideways, back toward the jet, and then at her. “Tony showed you what happens if you let all this anger make your choices for you. Is it worth it?”

No. She did not even need to speak the word. But there was a difference in seeing and feeling something and _experiencing_ it in real time. The other world’s Wanda might have wished for a reversal of time, she may have stopped herself from repeating the choices that killed her brother and destroyed her home. But this Wanda was still searching for an answer to her rage, and no cautionary tale could equal that. “It is not fair,” she said. “There is no justice for what has been done to my home, to my family. You are asking me to forget what has happened, to pretend that all things are forgiven.”

“No,” Steve said. “You don’t have to forgive anyone. You don’t need to forget. But there is _always_ a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do.”

Wanda smiled with tears in her eyes. “God’s righteous man,” like every dirty swear that Steve had ever been called. “I will not work with your wife. The others,” she shrugged, “you— A man who is afraid to become a monster is a man who understands what a monster is.”

Steve wanted to tell her, the way he always wanted to tell men who had misconceptions about the differences between Tony-and-Steve, that if she thought Steve was the better bet, she knew nothing about Tony Stark. “We can start there,” he said.

# B SIDE

The men in charge (that was to say, Steve and Natasha), had left Clint behind like a disinterested body-guard. He was perched near the exit, eating granola out of a plastic cup, flipping pages in a magazine. His bow was balanced on his lap, but it seemed ever so slightly ornamental when the man didn’t seem to be aware of anything around him. 

Tony stretched as he woke up. He hadn’t designed his jet for comfort purposes because it wasn’t necessarily meant to house any number of people for any amount of time. (And she hadn’t seen a purpose in it either.) But the ache in his back made him rethink the necessity of some folding cots and a few well-stored pillows. “How long as he been gone?”

Clint made a show of looking at his wrist, at a watch he wasn’t wearing, “a few hours,” he said like a master of sarcasm. He looked up from the pages of his magazine long enough to take note of Tony’s existence, “you talk in your sleep.”

“Do I say anything interesting?” 

They weren’t necessarily friends in the world Tony came from. Clint had never been part of his circle because Clint belonged to Natasha who didn’t like him. The pair of them were so inseparable that it was almost too outrageous to believe the man had a secret family in Kansas (or wherever the fuck he stashed them). Here, Clint shifted how he was sitting while he thought, changing his indifference to future danger to immediate concentration on the present problem. “Sounded like you were arguing with someone,” he said at last. “About Steve.”

(Is that what it was? Nettie seemed like she would have a lot to say about who had full ownership of her husband, and how she expected to have him returned unsullied. She seemed like the sort of woman that could justify fucking a man who she wasn’t married to and couldn’t tolerate the idea of her husband’s hands across Tony’s ass.) “I don’t remember,” Tony said.

Clint smiled, brief and conciliatory. (I know you’re lying, that smile said, and I’m not going to pick a fight over it.) “How’s your head?”

It had the quality of an overripe banana, a little bit too soft to be considered a real food anymore, being held into place by what felt like a rapidly thinning outer layer. It wasn’t limited to his head, the feeling was spreading down his neck, taking aim at the whole of his body. “I’ve had worse,” Tony said. Like the last time Wanda had shoved her fists into his skull to stir up his nightmares. At least this time he’d seen it coming, at least this time he’d been ready for it. (At least this time, he’d knew what the feeling was.) 

“I don’t like her,” Clint said. He shrugged. “I was kind of hoping she wouldn’t agree to help. That’s not very fair, we’ve made friends with worse people.” He snorted at that. “Hell, Thor rides his rainbow bridge home to consult his brother and we all act like we don’t know that he’s asking for help from that asshole. I don’t want Loki’s help.”

“I don’t want Wanda’s help,” Tony agreed, “but she’s an important asset.” He leaned back against the console behind him, let his hands rest loose and easy in his lap. “That’s what I told the US government when I brought her to the Avenger’s compound. I said, she’s an important asset, she is an invaluable resource. She was instrumental in the Sokovia effort.”

Clint nodded. Then he sighed. “So, you’re close to figuring it out?”

“What?”

“How to get back home?” (Because you talk in your sleep, Tony Stark, when you’re arguing with Nettie. You say everything right out loud, apparently. You spill all those secrets about things you didn’t even know where true.) 

“Closer than her,” he said. “There’s a— A bridge, I guess. I don’t know how to cross it, but sometimes we end up in a shared space together while we’re sleeping.”

“She’s not trying.” Clint didn’t make the words a question but a statement of fact. He didn’t put inflection on them, didn’t imply that he was upset or relieved about it. He left no clue about how to react. 

“Not really,” Tony said.

“I’m supposed to meet them now.” Clint slid the magazine off his lap, let it slap on the ground. He pushed himself upright, stooping under the low ceiling as he hesitated. There was something else he wanted to say, or ask, but—

“I’ll get her back for you,” Tony said.

Clint smiled like a reflex, his grip on the bow flexed. “I’ve seen a few movies like this, you know. Man gets a view of the life he never had, or life if he’d never been born, or whatever. He sees that all his choices have consequences. For better or worse, he learns something about himself and what he needs to be happy. You looked like shit when you got here, man. You looked like you were going one of those marionette dolls, but all the strings were snapping.” (Clint didn’t look very sorry about the observation.) “Yesterday, you let that girl rifle through your brain. You look better now than you did when you got here. I’m not saying I don’t want her back, because we do. We all want her back. I’m saying— I’m not surprised she’s not looking. It’s not all on you.” Then he nodded one more time and said, “bye,” as he went for the exit.

# A SIDE

Antoinetta had been too large a name to sit on the shoulders of so small a girl. So, said her Father, and her teachers, and Obadiah. Obie said it most in her memory, off to the side of busy social functions, sitting at the back of boring business affairs, lounging on her Father’s couches at her childhood house. Obie had kept candy in his pockets and a friendly smile on his face, with a glass of liquor held firmly in his grip, his eyes always seemed as lazy as a sleepy bear. Obie had a soft voice for little girls that were starving for their father’s approval. He had a gentle way of rubbing her back when there was nobody else to see. 

But Mother, Mother always called her Antoinetta. When she didn’t, she called her Tony. Tony was what Antoinetta had wanted to be called. T-O-N-Y. (Father hadn’t agreed, he’d called her Nettie until he died. He refused to give in, to see things any differently than he pleased, because Tony was a name for a boy and not for a little girl with a name too big for her shoulders.)

All these names, they all meant different things. 

She was Tony in her world, where things made _sense_. She was Nettie in a shared dream, getting talked down to by her male reflection. 

Right here, with her hands coiling up in fists, testing out the brand-new suit for stability, she had no idea who she was. Steve was dressed for the fight this time, wearing his spandex safety suit and a grim frown. 

“What are we hoping to accomplish?” Sam asked. He had been a mutually agreed upon referee, as close to impartial as they could hope to find at present. “I don’t think this worked out very well last time.”

“It’ll be fine,” she said. “Steve’s going to hit back this time. Aren’t you Steve?”

Steve didn’t answer with words, just with that one-sided almost-smile that he got when he wasn’t going to let himself be dragged into her traps. He was testing out the feel of the new suit, stretching his arms and moving his legs, getting an understanding of how the fabric moved with his body. “I’d also like to know what we’re hoping to accomplish,” he said.

“It’s one of those things you can’t explain, you just have to trust me on this.” She took her place across from him, watched him work through how he felt about that. “When you’re ready, Sam.”

Sam’s sigh seemed to say that he was never ever going to be ready. But he said, “on the count of one-two-”

She punched Steve, right in his stupid face, right over his perfectly-prepared-fists. She stepped right into his space in (what felt like) slow motion and she punched him as hard as the suit would allow. He took it here how he had in the forest; his body jerked and his voice broke with a wordless noise of pain. He shuddered in place, pushed half to one side, looking up at her with untapped anger. 

Maybe Tony-was-Nettie in this place, her father’s little troublemaker, always doing her best to antagonize a bad situation. Maybe she was as spiteful as a little monster, kicking up dirt to muddy her Sunday best, always embarrassing her father at important events. She was careless; she didn’t mind what got broken. Nettie was a violent beast when she had to be, Nettie was a shield that kept her safe—

Oh, and Nettie knew everything about Steve Rogers, all about that anger he kept in his chest. She knew better than anyone left alive, that Steve had lived an unfair life, and he was stuck in a real shitty place, and change was slow-coming and hard-earned. But Steve had pink teeth and a steady, impassive face, looking back at her like he was willing to take whatever she had to give him.

“I didn’t say th—” Sam was starting to say.

“Come on, Rogers,” Nettie hissed at him through the suit, “I know you’ve got it in you. You going to let me kick your ass twice?”

That was the thing about Steve Rogers, he always seemed to forget about all the fights he’d ever lost. Or maybe he didn’t, maybe he just didn’t _care_. That’s how the media men liked to play it. That’s how they put in the made-for-TV movies, a skinny boy with a big head and skeleton fists stood in an alleyway and he said, _I don’t care how many times you knock me down I’ll always get back up_. Movies liked to say that Steve won a fight now and again; they shared the sentiment that no man could maintain hope when faced with endless defeat.

That was just Steve Rogers for you. A man who remade the world to fit his needs. Steve Rogers got knocked down and he didn’t give one single shit about it. No, he set his feet and he put up his fists and he said, “alright,” like he’d only been waiting all this time for the okay. 

(Fix your shit, a man who looked just like her father said to her in a dream.)

# A SIDE

They sat in the speckled splatters of blood-and-spit. Steve with his back to the ropes and Tony wearing leaning forward in the center of the ring with ice pressed against her bruised face. Steve’s ribs were aching, his knee was a swollen knot of pain, an echo of her bright-bright laugh when she’d landed that kick.

_God damn Steve,_ she’d said, _protecting your fucking legs._

“You do this a lot?” he asked. There was an ice pack melting quietly to his side. It was meant for his face or his knee. But he didn’t like the cold on his skin, and he didn’t mind the pain. It had a throbbing, present sort of quality that wasn’t too overwhelming. It let him process events, it gave him something to concentrate on that wasn’t how small she looked half-way across the ring.

“Not so much anymore,” Tony pulled the ice pack away from her face, grimaced as she sat up straighter. One of her hands slid down her ribs to wrap around her side. Her suit had held up as well as maybe it should have, but there enough dents in it that she’d just dropped it like a pile of trash outside the ring. It didn’t collapse back into the suitcase shape she’d brought it in. “He’s got this thing about not hitting his wife, even when it’s for sport.”

“You think that’s unreasonable?”

“I think that’s a little insulting,” she turned to face him. There was a bruise forming on her face, right below her eye. One of her lips had a split in it. The skin-tight black under armor was keeping all her skin hidden, but he could imagine where the bruises were showing up. 

Steve snorted. He just shook his head, “is there anything that you don’t think is insulting?”

“He holds the door for me.” Her smile was almost hopeful.

“You’re hurt,” Steve said. “All of this,” he motioned at his body, “it’s going to be gone in a couple of hours, maybe a day if it’s serious. I slept off the last beating you gave me. Maybe he doesn’t like knowing that you’re in pain because of him. Maybe he doesn’t have trouble admitting that he has advantages you don’t.”

Tony looked down, not at him. Her hair was sweat-soaked and stuck to her head. Her every other breath was a hitch of pain on the end. There was no comfort in how she was sitting, but satisfaction anyway. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were pink all around the edges. “I don’t care,” sounded like something she had never said, “I don’t care about being _in pain_. I can’t _stand_ the feeling of knowing he knows he’s stronger. So, fucking _what_? You think I can’t kick your ass if it came down to it? You think I wouldn’t put you in the ground if I had to?”

“Why can’t they both be true?” Steve asked, “why can’t he know that you can beat him in a fight if you had to? I’ve watched him in action, I know he can fight. I know he’s smarter than me. I know he can outthink me if he had to. I have two fists and a shield, he has unlimited resources and an overactive imagination. I got sent to keep Ultron busy and he built Vision. We’re not equal on all levels and we aren’t ever going to be. Your husband knows. And he doesn’t want to hurt you. That shouldn’t be an insult.”

“I have this feeling,” her fist balled up, pushed against the base of her ribs, “like I can’t catch my breath. I can’t remember when it started, I can’t remember ever not feeling it? Except for when I’m with him. I can’t _breathe_ unless I’m with him, and I think that means that I can’t _breathe_ at all. Every time I try to take a deep breath, I remember the smell of that cave where they kept me.” Her voice was wavering, crackling in between the words. Her face flushed pink, and she half-laughed with one hand wiping tears away from her cheeks. “I think, we can’t relax now. We can’t _stop_. If I stop for one second, if I ever slow down, I’ll never outrun it. If I show one second of weakness, they’ll be back—not those men, but more just like them. And I _can’t_ ,” her voice snapped them, “I _can’t_ be that _unsafe_ ever again.”

Steve leaned forward, elbows across his crossed legs. He was too far away to touch her; he wasn’t even sure that she would have let him. “He can’t fix that for you.”

“And I _hate_ ,” sounded like perfect agony, “how _scared_ and _alone_ you’ve let your Tony become. I hate _him_ for it.” Her face wrinkled up with effort to keep from crying, but the tears were sliding down her face. Her legs were pulling up toward her body, like she would be safer if she took up less space. “That’s who I am,” was raw, and red, and wet, “it’s been so long, I don’t know how to change anymore.”

“When he comes back,” Steve said. Because it was easier to think like Natasha did, that this was all a minor interruption of their regular lives. That Tony would come back even if it didn’t benefit him at all, that he would _find_ a way no matter the cost. “I have to tell him that my best friend, the first man I ever loved, killed his parents. I’ve known for a long time now. I’ve sat at his table, I’ve eaten dinner with him. I’ve gone to his parties. I’ve laughed at his jokes. I’ve blamed him for things that were and weren’t his fault. I’ve known the whole time. I keep thinking it, when I see him laugh, I think: I made the right choice. Telling him isn’t going to change anything for the better. Telling him rips open a wound that he’s probably closed. That’s not why I haven’t told him. I don’t tell him because—” (I can’t.) “ _Bucky_ is my friend. I can’t defend him; I don’t even know if I should, but I _will_.”

Tony cleared her throat, she relaxed just a little, just enough to look at him like he was stupid (and that was almost a relief). “So, we’re assholes.”

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

“I cheated on my husband.”

“I slept with a married woman.”

“We broke Pepper’s heart,” she laughed without humor at those words, grimaced at the pain, “we don’t even like each other. We did all this—and we don’t even like each other.” Tony picked up the ice pack to press against her face. “We’re perfect for each other.” But also, with a hiss of pain, “fuck, you hit really hard.”

# B SIDE

Rules were _rules_ to some people and rules were _guidelines_ to some. Rules were suggestions, at times, a general idea of what should be considered proper conduct. (Bucky had always said that, when they were young and still carefree, Bucky would always say it right into his ear. _Rules are not always just suggestions, Steve._ ) It was just Steve hadn’t met a single rule that couldn’t be broken, and if every rule could be bent, then no rule was absolute.

Tony’s rules were absolute. Her empire ran on the understanding that no box should go unchecked and no paper should go unfiled. Her missions were planned and executed with precision. Tony’s absoluteness had created the necessity for Steve’s recklessness. (Not that he would call it that, though she was very fond of it.) Steve had taken over the team out in the field, where the only rules that mattered were the ones that protected innocent people from harm.

Steve lived by his guts, so to speak. He lived by his own internal compass, always pointing toward what was _right_ even when it wasn’t always what he wanted. (And sometimes, it pointed ever so slightly toward the nearest fight instead, but he tried to fight the sort of men who deserved to be fought.) Logic, and his wife’s rules, sided against Wanda. They put Ms. Maximoff into a category removed from viable team candidates. But Steve’s gut had them hiding out in half a broken school building, biding their time, and waiting to see if his gut and his faith still knew what they were talking about.

Wanda was never going to trust a man that didn’t trust her. She wasn’t going to respect a man who flinched. (And Wanda, who could not be overcome with brute strength, would have to be befriended.) Pietro was a shadow to his sister, pretending to be protective without realizing that he’d been rendered useless. Wanda had told Steve to wait here, that she would bring him the HYDRA agents that were lurking around her city.

It was a stupid plan. Half a school building was just enough of a building to ambush someone in. Steve had Natasha-and-Clint. (Natasha had two guns, the Black Widow bites and a variety of lethal skills. Clint had half a dozen arrows and an attitude.) 

Steve had a shield.

And this could be a trap. The longer they waited, the harder it became to stand still. 

But Steve stood still. (And he thought of his wife, seething in anger, asking him if he were truly willing to put his team’s lives on the line on a whim. It wasn’t a whim, but it must have seemed that way to her when she was angry. That was fine, Steve was willing to bet on his team and his wife was fucking another man in another universe.)

“What happens,” Clint asked when the stillness must have gotten too suffocating. Steve shifted on his feet, turned to look where Clint was sitting on desk with his back against a wall, giving him a perfect vantage point to look out a narrow crack in the wall. “If she doesn’t come back?”

“Wanda?” Natasha asked.

“No, Tony.”

Steve didn’t need to be looking at Natasha to know the glance she spared Clint must have promised gruesome murder. For all that she was capable of necessary cruelty she found it distasteful to discuss pointless things. So, she’d been shouting at him in a hallway about the fact that it might be time to move on, but that was business and this ruminating on unhappy possibilities was personal. “You don’t think she’ll be back?” Steve asked. 

Clint shrugged. “I mean, worst case. We tell everyone Tony Stark had a perfect sex change? You’re married to a man now? Are you married to him?”

“I don’t think so,” Steve said.

“People would believe she had a sex change,” Natasha said. She was across the room, watching through a partially open door, getting bored and annoyed at how long they’d been left in the dark. 

Natasha was just enough like Steve that they understood one another. Rules were guidelines. Failure happened. Things went sideways. Humor was crucial—cold and dark though it was, at times. She was as willing to fight as Steve, even when it was one against the world, and there was no hope. Natasha would always get back up. (So she might have been thinking, like Steve might have been thinking, that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Wanda was orchestrating a trap. A fight wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.)

“He seems like a good guy,” Clint continued, “do we recruit him? Does he work his way up from the bottom? Do we bring him up to speed on all her tech? Does he know it? I bet he knows it.”

Steve sighed, “is there a reason for this?”

Clint’s smile was tight, it was hiding a secret he didn’t want to share, but protocol was protocol and even if it weren’t, there was Natasha across the room that had to have been telegraphing threats with her eyes. Clint said, “Mr. Stark talks in his sleep. It sounded like he was talking to her— It didn’t sound like they were getting along.”

“How do you know he was talking to her?” Natasha asked.

“He called her Nettie. Didn’t she break someone’s nose for calling her that? It felt familiar.”

Steve looked at the floor, at the dirt and the dust and broken bits. He kicked the debris away from him, he let it sink it. He let the sensation of fury ebb and flow through his veins: a cool fire that ebbed and flowed with the beat of his heart. Because his brilliant bitch of a wife was off distracting herself away from the problem at hand. (She was alone, and that was the problem, she was all fucking alone, and she couldn’t _stand_ it.) But the man that woke up in Steve’s bed—

Well—

It didn’t matter; it wasn’t appropriate for _here_ , it was a distraction from what they were doing _now_. Steve wanted to know what was said, what was assumed, and what wasn’t, but he lifted his head with another sigh tumbling right out of his throat, as he said: 

“This isn’t the place,” because there was a time to be Steve Rogers, husband and friend, and there was this time and this place that needed Captain America, Field Leader. “We can’t let our guard down. We have to be ready in case this goes sideways.”

“Do we think it’s going sideways?” Clint asked.

“Things can always go sideways,” Natasha assured him. “Especially when you’re trying to recruit untested allies without backup.” (Against every rule in the Avengers’ handbook.)

“We have Tony,” Clint said. He looked back out at the street, resettling into the silence, “I mean, if we needed him. There’s a spare suit in that jet.”

“That would count as sideways,” Natasha answered. 

It would count as unplanned for. Steve settled back into the wait, listening to the noise of life continuing outside of the half-a-school building they were waiting in.


End file.
